


Battlefield Medicine

by arienai



Series: Brothers-in-Arms [2]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Also Guest Starring, And Some Questionable Decisions, Bosselot?, Established VKaz, Guest Starring the "SKULLS" Parasite Unit, M/M, Past BBKaz - Freeform, also threesomes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-08-22 21:54:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 48,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8302618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arienai/pseuds/arienai
Summary: While Ocelot and Commander Miller are held hostage by a hostile PMC, Venom Snake and Quiet go on a road trip with an old friend.  (I.e. What the hell was Snake doing during Pride Over Dignity?)What you countenance in your own house is the standard by which you will be judged.





	1. Loyalty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bbvqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbvqueen/gifts).



> My gift to derrire_le_miroir, who is so desperate for more BB/V in this fandom that she prompted me of all people to write some. But first some trashy Bosselot. Er, I mean context. In the MGS series Bosselot is a synonym for context.

When your mind tells you you're done, you're only fourty percent done.

An American would attribute that particular piece of wisdom to the Navy SEALs, but all special forces units - the GRU included - have their version of it. The percentage is immaterial, invented; by it they mean to say that when you're in pain, and in your mind you couldn't possibly go any further, your body still has most of its strength left and could go very far indeed. The sensation of pain is the body's way of signalling to the mind that it is injured or close to injury; the unpleasantness with which that sensation is perceived is intended to convince the mind to cease the action causing it. 

When faced with consequences greater than injury for ceasing the action, however, the mind will overcome by switching itself off and in so doing reveal the body is capable of much, much more than it had been led to believe. Take the eponymous Marathon runner, for example, who ran himself to death to announce that the Persians had been defeated by the Greeks. 

That's just a story, of course, and probably never happened. But aren't most of history's greatest hits the same way?

Even so, the principle is sound. These special forces units use grueling training camps to sleep deprive, starve, exhaust, freeze, and in the case of the GRU and other Spetsnaz, beat their would-be recruits to the point that their minds have long since told them in no uncertain terms that they are finished with this horseshit. Only those capable of overcoming their own instinct to quit make it through. 

It's why the rate of injury among special forces units is astronomical. It's also why they can outmatch men who're stronger, faster, and tougher on paper. Those men are only working with fourty percent, not one hundred.

It's why, a few years from now, an SAS trooper will run _three hundred miles_ from Iraq to Syria, through enemy lines, in combat boots and body armour, making poor Pheidippides' efforts look like a light morning jog around the park.

But I digress.

The Philosophers taught me that my mind was my most powerful weapon and that my body was little more than a flesh puppet cultivated to house it; the GRU taught me that the it was the mind that was weak, if the body was willing.

They're both wrong, of course.

My mind did break first, but not by so much as all that. In my defense, it didn't really get a fair shake: all of those carefully, delicately wrapped memories stashed away inside my head were _intended_ to come out in order, slowly, one at a time. I clearly should've been more prepared for a combination of drugs and Kazuhira "Fuck It, I'll Just Run My Mouth" Miller to hobble on over kick over the whole stack. 

I tried to shove them all back into place, quick as I could, like a harried mother late for morning practice trying to get six kids' worth of hockey bags back into her minivan--

John, have you ever _seen_ a minivan? I think they came out while you were in the coma. You'll have to trust me on this one, I suppose: the image is apt.

\--but then they ripped my fingernails out with a knife. Between that and the infection and the thirst I think I hit fourty percent right about then. I couldn't concentrate well enough to put them all back. I lost consciousness too many times. Miller wanted to chat; I think it helps him. Venom likes it too. There's a sensation some get when they hear low, soothing voices, speaking in monotone - I hear it's very pleasurable.

Or maybe I just needed to hold on to those memories of you.

I'm sorry. 

I can't concentrate when I can't breathe. 

I can't breathe because I don't have enough saliva left to swallow.

I'm sorry, you don't need to know this shit. I promise I'll edit it out in post. If I ever see you again I won't tell you I couldn't concentrate because they raped me, and I hate that almost as much as Miller seems to. It's nothing I can't handle but, you know, old wounds. It's something you're much better at enduring, I know. Maybe it's because I like to be in control - we both do - but you so readily accept chaos; maybe it's because I prefer to fight battles of the mind, and this method is oh so visceral. But it's something you'd never teach me. And I'd never ask you to. I'm not her and neither are you.

Fourty percent came and went a while ago. Where am I now? Eighty? Ninety? You always said gut wounds hurt the wor--

"--so are you a traitor to Cipher, or a traitor to the Red Army?" 

\--they really do, don't they

"Doesn't matter. And don't waste my time. You don't have very much time left, do you? We had reports from every unit on site, including air support: there were two. Big Boss, and another man. But you know that - you 'had to get the Boss out of that hospital' yourself after all."

\--God. Fucking. Damn. It. Иди на хуй. Сука, Блядь.

I've fucked this up. I'll be the one who pays for it, though, don't worry. I won't say a--

"He vanished. We've been tracking him ever since. Didn't have a damn clue to go on. Until... You know who recognized you? The Man on Fire himself."

I didn't think this was about _you_. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I don't know anything. "I don't know a-anything... w-wh... hnngh..." He choked out through strangled noises in the back of his throat.

"Oh, hello. You're back." Hitman patted his cheek. Held it while he drove the knife into Adam's belly again and twisted it around in his intestines.

He had no strength left to scream. He spasmed and shook and pawed the other man's arm, curled in on himself, around the mind-splitting agony in his gut, panting incoherent whimpers. 

Please please please please stop stop stop

It was the worst thing he'd ever felt in his life. He would much, much rather die than feel it again. A choice: gun in his hand? He'd blow his brains out, right now.

Ssh, ssh. Miller, stop crying. These are fatal. There's no coming back from this. He'll hit an artery and I'll bleed out. Just a few minutes more. You have nothing he wants. He'll kill you quickly.

But he didn't. He cut like a surgeon and, "It'll be hours," he promised. And raised the knife to do it again.

No no no please don't please don't

Adam's eyes rolled back.

_He's glad he got to see it, before he died. Row on row of the finest soldiers the world has ever produced, flocking to your name. The finest engines of war ever crafted. You stand above them all in your new nation. They cheer for you: invincible now that you've disarmed the rest. Lulled your enemies into a sense of security by the greatest trick ~~the Devil~~ ~~you~~ he ever pulled._

_He's up there with you, but not at your side. He's behind you, out of sight, in the shadows._

_The day is yours. The night is--_

"You know, I've always wanted to fuck someone while they died." Hitman's lips on his ear, his knife still buried to the hilt below his navel. "Might as well be you, huh? That's Big Boss's bitch, right?" He cocked his head toward Miller. "So you're, what - his whore? He keeps him at home and rents you out? Or do I have it backwards?"

He ripped it back out again, the blade violet-black with blood and shredded organs. Adam's weak spasms pressed him against his chest. "Bet I could reach right in there while I fucked you," Hitman murmured, breathless, while his fingertips ghosted over the gaping wound. He slipped two in past the severed muscle and Adam trembled involuntarily. "Feel myself. Hell, I bet I could jerk myself off. Wouldn't that be _something_. Might need a bigger hole though..."

He brought the knife up to Adam's neck and scraped it soothingly across his throat. "Tell you what. I am going to slice you open and fuck your body. No matter what you do now, it's too late. I am going to fist my own cock right through your guts because I bet you'll be a little too loose for me. A little too wet, too - that's a lot of blood." He smiled expressionlessly; Adam could feel his rapidly hardening shaft against the inside of this thigh. "If you survive it, I'll pull your intestines out and fuck you again. On your knees, so you can watch."

John, he means every word of this 

Kill me

"But if you're _very good_ , and you tell me _everything_ you know about him, I'll cut your throat before I do. Just the artery." He knicked it, voice and touch so, so gentle. "You won't even suffocate. Almost painless. Over in seconds. Then you'll feel nothing."

Hitman paused. 

Adam said nothing.

Hitman started sawing a deep trench between Adam's pelvic bones and Adam's mind collapsed.

He opened his mouth, but no one could hear him. Miller was shouting. Face dark red and eyes moist and his jaw set in that way that Adam found _adorable_ but right now it was _terrifying_ , snarling. Snapping. Flecks of saliva on his chin. 

Hitman shoved the knife into his mouth to shut him up. 

Too late. Boots banged in the hall; they'd heard Miller, Hitman'd gone behind his boss's back to do this, she wasn't happy. Good Cop he would have stabbed, but he wouldn't kill her. Too bad for him. Miller fainted but Adam couldn't blame him; he dragged himself over to his side and cleared his airway for him with his fingers while their captors fought outside. 

He could no longer produce tears; his shuddering sobs of relief were dry and silent and he smiled the whole time. He reached for Miller's hand and squeezed it gratefully. 

He'd stay awake long enough to tell Miller he'd won. For both of them. 

Static. Not harsh radio static. Gentle television static. Humming. Spots. White and grey. _Go to sleep,_ his mind said, _you're done._

"John's coming."

He is...? Adam could hold out for that. Even if it was only for a few seconds; even if he died in his arms. Wouldn't that be a way to go? He tried digging his fingernails into his palm to keep himself awake, then remembered that he didn't have any. Panicked, because he felt nothing. Then remembered that he was holding Miller's hand.

He rolled onto his broken arm instead.

It worked. The pain returned. And with it, misery. Abject. Crushing.

"I'm sorry, John, I can't..." Tell him I'm sorry. I should've been more careful. I should have killed myself when I suspected what he was really after. I was overconfident. Wasn't that what you told me not to be, the first time we met? "Enjoy your heaven, Радость моя. I'll wait for you in hell."

 

 

 

Hah.

You bought that, did you?

A fine note to end on, but

As ever, I leave the sentimentality to you.

I have other ways of expressing myself.

And I am no good to you dead.

 

 

 

Something broke. Some pretense or other. It no longer mattered, at that point.

When Kaz handed him a weapon, Ocelot found the strength to grip it.

Fourty-one percent.

_How do I know when I'm really done, then?_

_Oh, you'll know, Adamska. You'll know._

His mind was long, long gone. His ability to plan, think remember, form words; that intricate, finely honed work of art ~~The Philosophers~~ ~~the CIA~~ ~~the KGB~~ ~~Zero~~ ~~you~~ he himself had painstakingly sculpted over decades lay smashed to pieces under the reality of blood and brutality. All that was left was what the GRU made. 

Killing was as easy as breathing for Ocelot. Just an animal; retract his claws, play dead. If his prey shot them it'd be quick and clean, but he won't. He'll finish what he started. He'll stalk and and Ocelot will lunge and cut deep, saw deep, right past his jugular while he wastes his time attacking a lame dog on a chain, ignoring the real threat in the room because Miller _makes more noise_.

No, no, a little higher. There you go.

He was dimly aware of the fact that he'd saved Kaz's life. That the other man could now make a run for it and would most likely succeed. "Run" used figuratively, of course. _Go on - at least my last words were something cool._ Dimly aware that the other man had raised him to his feet instead. Was using him like one of his equally shoddy prosthetic limbs. Expected Ocelot to walk forward on his broken and shot ones.

Good; the pain kept him awake. Wasn't quite accustomed to the angle his feet held without the slight heel of his boots - when was the last time he was barefoot, save getting up in the morning or going to sleep at night? - couldn't remember. Didn't matter. His legs were brusquely informed that they were going to function until he died.

He would walk up those stairs even if it meant dying on the landing. Miller was too smart for that, though.

_Clever girl,_ Ocelot thought as he realized that was not where they were going. _Are you really a samurai, or a samurai's wife - defending the home for your master? This is your territory._

No, he probably didn't think that; his mind was a fog of oxygen deprivation and a sludge of blood loss, his thoughts were little more than breathing, walking, reloading. He probably added that later, because he liked the image. Kazuhira and his naginata. In a kimono. Out for revenge, like Lady Snowblood. Futile for Ocelot, at this point, but he had to admit that it would _feel so very good_. Their captors would have assault rifles and they had a single revolver with six shots that Miller was terrible with and Ocelot was half-blind and weak as a kitten. But Miller liked that kind of thing: going down together, in a blaze of glory.

Romantic idiot.

Ocelot kissed his knuckles anyway.

They were halfway up the lift when Ocelot realized that Kaz was doing this to save his life.

охуеть, when was the last time someone had tried to _protect_ him?

When was the last time someone had tried to _help_ him?

Never?

He would make every shot count, he decided. He _would_ make this a blaze of glory, but his own kind, not Miller's: an effective one. One that won the battle. He would keep aiming and firing until the last synapse stuttered cold. He knew the angles of the rooms upstairs well enough. He knew which walls and doors were metal and would ricochet. He would muster up a performance that would make you proud.

It turned out to be a shooting gallery. They weren't even ready. These were shots he could have made when he was ten. 

He still missed the last one.

He was getting very cold and could no longer see. The pain that kept him focused was gone. _Miller, he's dead. Miller, stop firing. Miller I need help._

That old GRU instructor was right: he did know. He fell and in his head he was falling through the floor, right into the ocean. The pain was gone and so was the sensation of Miller's arm around his waist and he called desperately for his attention - _Kaz_...

Miller was calling for a trauma team, but that would come far too late. It would take minutes, and after a few minutes without oxygen there would be irreparable damage to his brain. He might survive, worthlessly. Venom might not want to pull the plug if that happened, but Miller would most definitely have the guts to do it.

_And here's to you, for that._

John was kissing him. 

It wasn't really John, he knew. It was an image evoked by his mind by the massive flood of serotonin released by his dying brain, to comfort him. No lights, no floating sensation: he knew himself well. Not damn bad, as these things went. He could really feel the warmth of your lips. The scrape of your stubble.

That was interesting: you'd shaved. You had both eyes. You were young. Not how he usually thinks of you, but he went with it. Nostalgia, perhaps. What else? You had a gas mask dangling loose around your neck, under the kevlar throat guard of your body armour. There was an automatic shotgun slung across your back but he couldn't see it well enough to tell which model; only that you carried metal slugs, not shot. Just what are you trying to breach and clear, John? _My heart_ , he chuckled, but probably didn't. He hadn't moved since he'd collapsed on the floor of the signals room to die.

You came prepared for a close quarter fight. You have an MP5; not the vanilla version but the brand new, next generation variant developed for the US Navy with the collapsible stock and tritium front sight post and suppressor with specialized subsonic ammunition, ambidextrous trigger and pistol grip. Gucci kit, plain and simple. Still, it did provide a tactical advantage over the Diamond Dogs' jury rigged equivalent, and when the Combat personnel had heard about it they'd _had_ to have it, practically tugging Miller's loose sleeve, pleading. When he'd shot them down cold they'd come to Ocelot to intercede on their behalf because Mother Base's mom (dad?) was just too mean. He wasn't a fighter and he just didn't _understand._

Ocelot had reassured them that he would. He'd waited until the Boss had planned to take a few days of leave and Miller'd been almost _happy_ he'd been so excited. But wouldn't you know it, every single form the Intelligence division submitted for the month's acquisitions was filled out wrong. It would take Miller days to sort it all out, not to mention the money that they'd lose if operations ground to a halt if he didn't. Ocelot _could_ fix it all himself, but it wasn't really his _job_.

_Fine._ Miller'd growled and thrown the whole stack at him, scattering papers to every corner of the room. _I'll buy your fucking gun._

"That's it, sir. That's right. Keep breathing."

That wasn't John, that was the assault team's medic. Of course. They would have been standing by. He could have run up here in seconds. He would have a bare minimum of equipment: just morphine and coagulants and a few blood bags and his own mouth for when Ocelot stopped breathing, but it would be enough. For a few minutes, it would be enough. The trauma team would arrive with their respirator and surgeons and Ocelot would survive this, after all.

Miller'd won. He'd won, and he'd saved Ocelot's life, at the risk of his own. 

That left Adam with some interesting questions. _Holy hell_ was there a fire in Miller when he needed to summon one. Neither John nor Zero had mentioned it to him, which meant that they didn't know. They'd told him that, by himself, Miller was nothing more than sound and fury, signifying nothing. Maybe it was a new development. Maybe clipping his wings and casting him aside hadn't hobbled him, after all. Maybe it had pruned withered limbs away, leaving the new ones to flourish in their absence, nurtured with resentment. Maybe they genuinely did not realize that there were more than two ways to win.

There were two men who would kill Kaz if Adam told them about it. And one who would kill Adam for keeping it from him. 

_We're even_ , Adam thought, and sealed that realization away behind those words. To be triggered by himself only. 

We're even.


	2. Brotherhood

**48 Hours Earlier**

He walked in across waves of sand on the heels of a tempest.

Venom'd taken that jeep after all. A good compromise, right? Something he could pack all of his gear in but still take off road. He wasn't exactly _tired_ of walking - more like bored of it. It had been a long day and an even longer night. He was ready to reward himself with a much-deserved nap on the helicopter and a shower back at Mother Base.

 _Sandstorm approaching_ , his sensors cautioned, and Quiet hummed a note of displeasure.

"We'll ride it out," he told her. Thoughts of comfort - of sleep, hot food, soft sheets, another man's aftershave - pressed him onward against his better judgement as a 200-foot high wall of swirling debris closed in on the both of them. 

Sandstorm was putting it mildly. The whipping wind had awakened the desert and flung it furiously across roadways that only served to channel a flood of stinging stones that cut deep into any uncovered part of her skin. Driving against it proved impossible; he was forced to abandon the vehicle and stagger for cover when the windshield shattered. He huddled in an outcropping with her as the maelstrom blotted out the night sky. 

They brushed the sand off one another in the aftermath. Her movements were unusually hurried; he imagined her gasping, and sighed softly, "Sorry."

He couldn't imagine the kinds of places she had sand right then because _he_ had sand in some pretty uncomfortable places and he was clothed to the neck.

She didn't seem to mind, though: she wordlessly offered to scout ahead and he let her, turning to the sad remains of his vehicle. A quick post-mortem found the air filter clogged to the point of suffocating the engine; it coughed, sputtered, and uttered one last rattle before giving up the ghost completely. He could possibly have fixed it, but it's a fight to leave the base with more than a single suppressor - he can't imagine they'd ever let him take a car repair kit. 

If he asked, he knew the answer would be, _Fulton it and we'll fix back on Mother Base. I'm not sending you out there with something you'll use once then forget to remove from your loadout for the next twenty missions,_ which was more accurate than he'd care to admit but solved precisely none of his immediate problems.

A useless idea, anyhow. The winds had downed whatever relay tower his radio had been using. It spat a crackle and a whine out at him, and would continue to do so until he moved into the range of another signal. It didn't really matter - he missed his exfils all the time, the helo would wait a couple of minutes then bug out - but sometimes he wondered if he didn't try Pequod's patience at times.

If he'd taken a motorcycle, he would have been able to drag it into cover with him. He might've even been able to beat the storm front back to the LZ. 

That's when _he_ clicked his tongue. "When you want to redecorate your house, listen to your wife. But when you need a good ride, always ask your girlfriend."

It was Venom's voice; only, it wasn't. It was expressive, enticing, easy. The intonation was all wrong: wry where his was subdued, bold where his was resolute.

"Ishmael," Venom said warmly. Greeted him with a mechanical hand outstretched first, questioned how he'd slipped past Quiet's preternaturally watchful gaze only later. 

The last time he'd been so relieved to see a man he'd handed him back his sunglasses, but he had nothing to give this one: his fellow survivor of fiery, cruel nightmare, every minute of which had been all too real. The man who could have - should have - abandoned him to save his own life, and vanished into the night without waiting for a single word of gratitude.

Here he was, approaching with a comfortable tread that neither slipped or skidded in the freshly fallen sand, as if no time had passed between them at all. It felt that way, to Venom. "So you do remember me," Ishmael noted. He came to rest easily beside the hood where Venom crouched, arms folded, leaning backwards to shift the load he carried onto the vehicle.

"Of course I do." Venom unhooked the steel prop and let the hood fall shut with a graceless clang that rang out too loudly in the still that followed the storm; Quiet huffed another note of displeasure, blended with amusement. Ishmael failed to flinch; unmoved by the green dot that flicked from his chest to his temple. "It's okay Quiet. Stand down. He's a friend."

"Am I? That's quite the upgrade." He half-expected Quiet to recognize Ishmael before writing it off as ridiculous. He was covered head to foot in the battle dress of the Russian Spetsnaz, complete with balaclava and nightvision optics. If he hadn't spoken Venom would have tranquilized him on sight.

No, if he hadn't spoken, he would have had the drop on Venom. Sloppy. Just sloppy. 

He carried a pack that was obviously heavy, making Venom's failure to hear him coming all the worse: it was three quarters of his own height - which was slightly shorter than himself, Venom noted, now that they were both standing upright - and Venom wondered what possessed him to slog through the desert with it on foot rather than find a vehicle. _Well, look how well that turned out for you._ He seemed to read the folorn look Venom gave his late jeep well enough, and added, "My black Cadillacs never let me down."

Venom fished for a response. Something equally snappy. Of all the things he could have said, could have asked - _it's good to see you again, to what do I owe the honour, need a ride?_ \- that last with a meaningful chuckle. Of all of these, "...Why are you here?" was what he came up with.

Ishmael did chuckle, and clapped him on the shoulder. "It's good to see you again." He straightened the straps of his pack, heaved it back up, and started off in the direction he came from. "Come on. We've got a long walk ahead of us."

Venom's feet moved of their own accord, to follow. Why not? He had questions. Ishmael had answers. And this was no place to talk. There was nothing more on his schedule for the night; he'd told Kaz his plan was to come home after this one, but plans change. _The battlefield is always evolving,_ his mentor had once told him. Whatever Ishmael had in store for him assuredly took precedence over dozing off on the helicopter, no matter how soft or agreeable his companion for the flight.

It was hours until dawn, but the storm had kicked enough debris into the air to reflect the light like snow in the winter, a violet-orange haze of distant fires and searchlights. Enough to see by. To be mesmerized by the way Ishmael's footprints failed to disappear before he stepped in them. He was as real as everything else that happened that night, and the realization lifted Venom's spirits in a way they hadn't been since he and Quiet had last 'gone dark' at a captured Soviet outpost, so that he could smoke and she could dance to the radio in peace.

How long ago had that been? Weeks? Months? Nights turned into days as one mission spilled into the next, always something new coming through the pipes; he'd left a puppy, returned to a fierce protector; left a wounded but hopeful man, returned to a shattered cynic. The progression of time marked not by the calendar but by what he'd accomplished. How long since he'd crawled along in this man's shadow? 

_A lifetime._ Was what it felt like, at times. He'd had several theories about him, raised them to Kaz, who tersely changed the subject, and to Ocelot, who remained uncharacteristically uncurious. The first and most likely: that Ishmael had never existed at all. But why would he imagine such a thing? Why did he awaken in the passenger's seat? The second: that he was a fellow soldier who simply happened to be in the right place at the right time with the conviction to save a helpless comrade. The more he settled in to his current reality, the less likely that kind of serendipity seemed. The third: that Ishmael had been placed there on purpose, as his bodyguard. Perhaps he'd really been injured; some deeply trusted member of the Diamond Dogs, an old friend. Venom couldn't imagine Ocelot letting anyone else that close to him. That was the most likely option, and his working theory. For a time he'd expected to hear Ishmael's voice raised in casual chatter with the rest of the men back on Mother Base. To round some corner and see him salute, knowingly.

Since he'd had the time to think about it, Venom had decided he would return that one. For once.

"Talkative as ever I see." Ishmael's voice coaxed him from his reverie. Venom glanced back over his shoulder; the jeep had long since been swallowed by the distance.

Could it truly have been the second option? For a Soviet soldier to wind up in a British army hospital seemed insane, but so was man wreathed in flame fueled by bullets. Was he undercover, behind enemy lines? SAS? He sounded American, not British, but accents could be faked. He wished - not for the first time - that Ocelot were here to give it his own best guess. Those rarely missed the mark. "Do we know each other?"

"Yes." Ishmael paused long enough to tease, before adding, "We met in the MSF."

Ah. The third option. Occam's Razor. "I'm sorry, I don't remember." Not that that made him novel or unique in that respect. Far from it.

"It'll come back to you." Venom wished he had that kind of confidence; after tearing every object to pieces in a certain room in the medical section, down to the bolts, he'd stopped trying to make sense of his memories. He did what the voices on the radio told him to do, and in their absence, Ishmael's would suffice. Her laser sight was proof that she had seen him too. Was proof enough that he really existed. Wasn't it?

If any of this did.

"Lost you again, huh?" Ishmael stopped in his tracks. Reached backwards to touch the shrapnel that jutted out of Venom's forehead. He felt along the ridges with calloused fingertips, then gently closed his gloved hand around the largest piece. 

Venom realized what he was going to do before he did it, but did nothing to stop him.

The flash of pain when Ishmael wrenched on the jagged metal was _sickening_ and he staggered, eyes rolling _head smashed_ back, pushed off his feet by the _blast wave_ of nausea, inhaling sharply past it _the fire in his lungs_.

It left him panting, reeling, on his knees. The grit of sand between his fingers, grains wedged uncomfortably under his nails. The lingering soreness of his shins from running in boots. The bite of a buckle into a bruise from rolling over a rock on his last mission. A stray piece of lettuce caught in his teeth from his last meal at the mess, six hours ago. His own scent - days' old sweat that cold showers could never quite strip away, leather, engine oil. And Ishmael's: blood, brass, and tobacco.

The scent was even stronger on his outstretched hand. Venom hadn't killed, smoked, or reloaded one of his own magazines in _months_.

He caught it with a muttered, "Thanks," and Ishmael clapped him on the shoulder. He hauled Venom to his feet easily - his grip was firm, solid, _real_.

"Anytime."

With that established, then: "Who are you?"

"Sorry." He shook his head coyly. "I don't put out until the third date."

"You're not one of the Diamond Dogs." 

"No. I joined a different mercenary group, after the MSF--"

Quiet chirped a warning; Venom held up a hand to silence him. This was no place to chat. They melted from the roadway together, and dropped low amidst the scrub brush that lined it. He couldn't see a thing, but that was no surprise: Quiet had a much better vantage point. He motioned for Ishmael to move closer, only to find that the other man had begun to climb the rock face up to Quiet's position. _He doesn't work for you, anymore,_ Venom chided himself. He couldn't blame him: from what Kaz had told him, the Diamond Dogs' circumstances had been dire enough in his absence. 

Venom's forearms ached just watching him. He reached an overhang, tossed his pack up over the lip while holding on to to a rock one-handed, and jumped. Used the momentum to pull himself up and over. Then looked back down, head cocked, as if to say 'aren't you coming?' 

The day Venom did a muscle up wearing all his kit was the day Kaz let him spend six months at Mother Base pumping iron and not a day sooner. He sneaked around for a few minutes to find an easier way up. A nice slope with a few plants to hold on to. He still almost slipped and Ishmael caught him by the back of collar.

"We need to work on your PT," he clicked his tongue again and went to lay down beside Quiet's crouched form. Adjusted his optics while Venom zoomed in on his own. "Good eye," Ishmael murmured approvingly, and pointed to a faint haze far in the distance.

Venom hadn't spotted it until a handful of red targets appeared on his HUD. Smoke. No, mist. Over a mile out. He grit his teeth. Sighed. Skull snipers. The last thing he needed. The last thing Quiet needed, too: they could spot four, but that meant there were more than likely twice that many. They'd tried to take on six together, in Africa, and failed miserably. Outgunned. Venom had resorted to sneaking past them on his own while Quiet had nursed her wounds back on Mother Base. One of his least heroic encounters.

More red triangles appeared. These lined the road and cliff face below. The ones who could vanish. Use CQC. They were learning; there would be no sneaking past them this time. "We need to find another way around," Venom whispered, defeated.

Why were they out in this kind of force? Unlike Africa, Venom had no precious cargo. Intel had mentioned nothing of worth in the area; hadn't mentioned the possibility that the Skulls or Cipher would be in the vicinity at all. He would have to ask Ocelot about as soon as he got his signal back.

"No," Ishmael informed him, unzipping his pack to pull out piece after piece of black-coated steel, "That's our route."

Venom couldn't see another one, aside from backtracking. "You have a plan to get us through that?" If they'd been better equipped, Venom could see it: Ishmael and Quiet set up on either side to flank the snipers, Venom below with a handful of grenades, an assault rifle, and every round he could physically carry. "Does this plan take into account the fact that she and I are only carrying tranquilizers?"

Ishmael laughed under his breath. "Of course you are." He screwed a flash suppressor the size of Venom's forearm onto the end of a barrel and stock that were almost as tall as Quiet and began to attach a bipod. "It's not that I don't understand that Fultoning more 'volunteers' back to Mother Base is important, but what do you do if when the shit hits the fan? Or you run out of ammo?"

"Run. Hide. Wait for a supply drop," Venom answered honestly. No, wait. Reached back into his belt and pulled out the sole lethal firearm he carried. A gift from Ocelot: one of his Tornadoes. "Break glass in case of emergency."

"Oh, you like to play with fire." Venom could hear his grin while he snapped the stock into place. "Don't worry. I've got a solution that won't put you in the dog house tonight."

"How are you going to get us through _that_?" Another cluster of red had appeared; a patrol to watch the backs of the snipers. Venom was out of ideas.

"Through it? I'm not going anywhere near that shitshow." He finished his assembly by adjusting the scope and tightening the bolts, then brushed fingertips lovingly along the surface. "Allow me to introduce you to our trailblazer for evening: her name's Barrett M82 and she's a .50 caliber anti-materiel rifle who's killed more parasites than a bomber full of DDT."

A heavy piece of hardware to haul around, but Venom had to admit that it would have come in handy once or twice. Still, good luck convincing Kaz to add it to the list when he had five other sniper rifles in development and every shot Quiet made was a bullseye with the weapons she already had. "You want us to cover you?" Venom asked, and waved Quiet forward to scout for positions in range with better physical cover.

"Won't be necessary. And here's fine." Venom thought he was joking until he patted the ground behind the rifle. "You want to do the honors, Snake?"

Venom's eyebrow quirked, and he shook his head, incredulous. "I can't make shots like that." Why wouldn't he ask Quiet to do it?

"No, you can't," Ishmael agreed, and reached into his pack for a spotting scope and a range finder. "But _we_ can."

This was insane. Venom had put his time in at the range, to be sure, but it took professional marksmen years, decades, to shoot accurately over 500 yards, let alone a mile. He allowed Ishmael to pull him down beside him regardless, and laid obediently behind the scope, with flushed certainty this would be a dismal failure. "We need a little guy time here," Ishmael told Quiet, "Make sure the bears don't get us. I don't do bears."

Quiet gave him a thumbs up and turned to watch their six.

"Well, maybe on special occasions." Ishmael laid down next to him and wrapped an arm around his waist. "Been a while? I'll ease you in slowly." He paused, sweeping the scope between both rock faces and the road and back again. "Range: 1600 yards. Center of arc will be the road."

"I see the road," Venom replied automatically.

"I sure hope so, or it's going to be a long night," Ishmael chuckled; Venom could feel his chest vibrate next to his own. "There are two snipers on the cliff face to the right of arc."

"I see them," Venom replied more helpfully this time. Chagrined.

"There are three snipers along the cliff face to the left of arc."

Venom adjusted the scope. Frowned. "I see two."

"Your HUD's made you lazy," Ishmael shook his head with amusement and reproach, adding, "Reference: grey tree stump at 1650 yards, 10 yards left of arc. There's a rifle barrel sticking out of that tree stump and I don't think the tree's armed." 

So there was. Black on black, barely visibly against the night sky. But perfectly straight and clearly not a branch; _Look for right angles,_ his mentor had taught him, pointing at the thick jungle foliage on a sweltering night in--

\--in

\--Russia. No, Florida? Venom chewed his lip until he tasted blood to chase the memory away. "Seen."

"Good. There's always that one guy who hides behind the one piece of cover on open terrain, huh?" Ishmael released the scope and pulled out a notebook, scratching a few hasty equations while Venom wiped a bead of sweat from the back of his neck. Ishmael was going to ask him to make this shot _through cover_. "Like nobody's going to think to look there. I hate that guy. Or girl. Bad day for her. On the bright side, her teammates don't have her in their field of view either."

Venom took a breath to steady himself. Squeeze the trigger slowly and follow through. Fire in the pause between exhalations; the space between heartbeats, if possible. 

"Elevation: five plus four. Three mils."

Venom moved the reticle to the position he was told; his sight told him that he was aimed at the night sky. Steady. With a bipod there should be no sway. Only the minute movements of his hands and the expansion of his chest.

"Hold her tight. She might feel like a lady, but she kicks like a bitch."

Venom depressed the trigger. Just the slightest flinch, before the butt pounded against his collarbone.

Sent it cracking off harmlessly into the void as the heavy casing thumped to the ground disappointedly beside them. 

"Well," Ishmael remarked, back up at the scope, "I _think_ that was off to the right. You managed to thread the needle between the ground and the horizon."

Venom tried to laugh, shakily. "I told you. I can't. I'll spot for you, if you want."

"You're going to give up after one missed shot?" Ishmael asked, incredulous. "Do you have any idea how many shots _I've_ missed?"

"Probably not as many as I have."

"Definitely not as many as you have. But you only need one hit, with these. Get your ass back down here." Ishmael squeezed his waist. 

"I'm only going to alert them." Venom sighed. The only reason he hadn't that time was on account of the distance and the fact that he'd missed so badly it hadn't hit anything remotely near them. "I can't--"

"You can." Ishmael sounded so convinced. So utterly convinced.

"How do you know? I've _never_ made a shot like this before." Not in all of his missions. Not even against The End; he'd sneaked around and flanked him. Trying to fight a real sniper from this distance was madness.

"Because you have the steadiest hands of any man I've ever met. I've seen you succeed when fractions of an inch counted, artillery going off around you, soaked in blood, with a wounded comrade screaming in your face," Ishmael told him, brimming with undeserved confidence. Describing someone who died nine years ago. "Come on. Same shot."

Still, he felt proud. Irrationally. That arm around him was familiar - of course it was, he was an old friend. Far more familiar than Ocelot's voice, known to him for some two decades, and Kaz's lips, which he should know, intimately. "What if they return fire?"

"We're so far out of their effective range we might as well be in Kansas."

"You've clearly never seen Quiet shoot."

"Sure I have. Surprisingly close for a dedicated sniper, no? She might as well be sitting on top of you half the time. Never wondered why the Skull snipers top out at four, five hundred yards for reliable shots? Near as I can tell, hardware limitations aside, the parasites enhance their reflexes and depth perception, but they still have human minds. We don't take things like drop, windspeed, curvature into account naturally. Not at these distances. We can't. Our brains aren't built for it. So we use technology. Math. The same as how pilots could once fly by feel with the planes of the past, but the speed and acceleration of modern fighters pull our senses in too many directions at once. If they listen to their instincts at high Gs, they'll plant the thing nose first into the ground. They need instruments."

"You're talking about somatogravic illusions." The vestibular system sending information to the brain that it wasn't built to understand; the limitations of being human, rather than avian, or something else entirely. 

"Yeah, that. Knew you'd know the fancy word for it. I think, not too far from now, it'll make us outdated technology on the battlefield... Never mind. What I'm saying is that, with a spotter, you can shoot further than they can no matter how 'enhanced' they are. You should quit stalling, though." Ishmael gave him a pat.

 _I'm not. You are._ Venom thought, before he realized that Ishmael was waiting until his heart rate slowed to normal. Falling into the same breathing rhythm he had.

 _He's speaking from experience. If he did this, why can't you? You're the legend._ He didn't feel much like a legend at that moment. Just a man. 

Quiet hummed.

Just a man. Alone at the range with two old friends. Firing harmlessly off into the night sky.

Venom pulled the trigger and a second and a half later the bark of the stump powdered into wet red mulch. The too-straight line of the distant rifle thrown several feet through the air along with the arm and shoulder attached to it.

"Nice work," Ishmael rumbled. Quiet's voice ticked up a few notes, pleasantly.

The Skulls had heard the impact, even if they couldn't gauge where it came from at this distance. The second sniper on the left flashed over to the first target's location - however they spoke to one another, it wasn't good enough. Just as Ishmael had promised, the area they swept in response was less than half the way up the road.

"Reference: freshly painted tree stump. Elevation: no change. Three point two mils."

Venom fired again, without thinking. He had enough time to swing the sights back down--

\-- _enough firepower to cut a man in half_ \--

Not exactly. These rounds - this weapon - wasn't meant for people. It was meant for emplacements. Ishmael was using it for the superior effective range it provided, not the effect on target. Which was to carve a fist-sized hole in her lower back and dinner plate-sized hole in her abdomen, through which her internal organs and shattered spine spilled out onto the dead wood. More broken in half than cut.

"That's why you hit the dirt _before_ checking ballistics," Ishmael remarked, "Otherwise the sniper'll help you out with that."

Venom squeezed his eyes shut. Grit his teeth. Drew a breath through them, and stared through the reticle again, ready for the next shot.

They would kill him if they got the chance, he knew. They almost had on more than one occasion. But so would any number of Diamond Dogs have, before he extracted them. Men and women he now called allies. The parasites had changed them but they were still human; as was Quiet. As was he.

To whatever extent that was true anymore.

Just focus. Slow his heart rate and breathing to sync with the man beside him, utterly unaffected. "Last one to the left of arc. She's moving. Be ready to follow up with a second shot if you need it."

Venom didn't. His hands were steady. He hummed along with Quiet; their dirge for the fallen.

" _Beautiful_ shot," Ishmael breathed, and with the words the hair rose on the back of Venom's neck. "Like a surgeon."

There was nothing surgical about these corpses that scarcely resembled people, where they were hit. He swept the scope across to the right of arc quickly, to give his mind as little time as possible to register the fact that it had been a head shot, that decapitation would have been much cleaner than the long pink ribbons of skin, skull, and face he'd left in his wake.

\-- _I will maintain the utmost respect for human life_ \--

When had he promised to do that? Why did it keep coming back to him? What purpose did that serve, for a soldier? 

Ishmael kept calling his shots; Venom kept making them; a thumb rubbed circles in the small of his back as they grew more and more difficult. The Skulls should have scatter, taken cover. Fled. Instead they moved with inhuman purpose, honing in on the location of their fire at last. They disappeared and reappeared with seconds to spare as they moved, gaining with impossible speed. No, with less time than that. Far less.

The space between heartbeats.

"Well done," Ishmael stood and only in that interruption did Venom realize that he was no longer spotting targets. That Venom had made the last handful on his own. _What was the range on that one?_ Ocelot would want to know. "I leave this to you."

The thump, roar, and whistle of Venom's shots were joined in concert by the snap of small arms fire. Ishmael was making the same shots with 5.56 rounds. No, he was covering him. 500 yards, 300, 200 - Venom was switching zooms when he felt Quiet's delicate hand on his hip. A weight lifted. She vanished. Reappeared atop a rock below. 

BANG. A .45 round. Crackle. Whir. Venom's slow exhalation. 

BOOM.

The last of the snipers. He dropped the rifle and rolled for cover before a piece of earth ripped out of the ground by the Skulls below him impacted the place he had just been. Crossed his arms in front of his face to block the debris. Leapt to his feet and fell into a CQC stance right before the same Skull appeared in front of him and Ishmael emptied an entire magazine into the back of its head.

"RELOADING!" He shouted; alien to Venom, at first - how long had he worked alone? or with partners who used no words? - then nostalgic. Painfully. A call to cover one of his brothers-in-arms.

He had no weapon of his own save a tranquilizer pistol, but his presence was enough. Whether they thought him to be the sniper or knew him to be Big Boss, they were moths drawn to him in the darkness - they left themselves wide open to attack him, equally unarmed, for Quiet and Ishmael to press their advantage. It did not occur to him how dangerous this was; Quiet didn't miss and Ishmael hadn't risked his life in worse circumstances to end him with a stray bullet here.

Two of them; one a flicker over his shoulder, barely seen. Bad angle. Bullets would penetrate either one of them and exit into Venom's own torso. " _No_ \--" he heard Ishmael's sharp cry--

But Venom was fast. He ducked the blade that descended toward his head and in that space Quiet blew the back of the Skull's head off with Ocelot's revolver. He was going to be fi--

No, that hadn't been what Ishmael meant, he realized as he staggered forward and his boot found empty space--

 _Always be aware of your surroundings_ , his mentor had told him, and he had just enough time to remember her voice, as harsh and unforgiving a mistress as gravity before it tumbled him off the cliff's edge--

Until his arm jerked painfully and he bounced against the side. Ishmael's fingers wrapped crushingly around his hand.

Quiet killed the last one a second later.

They hauled Venom back up together. "You all right?" Ishmael asked him, breathing hard as they knelt face-to-face.

 _That's my line_ , Venom thought, still shocked by how exposed the other man had left himself to keep Venom from breaking a few bones over his own stupidity and carelessness. There were men Venom would have done the same for, to be sure, but they were either friends counted by the decade or lovers who'd risked life and limb for him before. "Yeah."

Which would be, no doubt, why Ocelot had trusted him at his bedside.

Quiet was watching Ishmael, too, with a look of approval. She didn't know who he was, of course, and he had no intention of telling her; if he wanted to, Ishmael could do it himself. That was, if he recognized Quiet either. _Unless he decides to jump ship and join us, it doesn't really matter, does it?_

Ishmael caught Venom's gaze and returned her earlier gesture of a thumbs up, which he turned into a gun with his index and middle finger. "That sure was some fancy shooting," he drawled, and Quiet covered her mouth with silent laughter.

He rose and dusted himself off to begin packing up the rifle. "Well, Miss Barrett's cleared the way for us."

"The way to where?" Venom asked finally, as Quiet returned the revolver to him. 

"My own mission. I could use a little help with this one, and I heard you were in the area. Might be good training for you, too." Ishmael zipped up the pack and went to heave it back up onto his shoulders before Venom stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"My turn," he offered. Wasn't any heavier than the ceramic armour he'd declined to wear on this one. "And... sure. I owe you. You know that." Doubly so, after tonight. "We'll help."

Ishmael started off down the road, and Venom followed him, stepping around the pieces of the corpses they'd made. "Where is this mission?"

"Through the looking glass, my friend. On the other side of war."


	3. Trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It might be edifying, though certainly not necessary, to read some of my made up background for the Medic prior to this one (https://archiveofourown.org/works/8062027). Everything I write - unless otherwise specified - takes place in the same universe, though all series are self-contained.
> 
> Much obliged to houston180 for medical accuracy consult on this one. If you ever want me to return the favour re: shootbangs just let me know.

It was a small town just outside Soviet control - outside Mujahideen territory, too - where a contact had told Ishmael he could find intel on the location of a Cipher agent operating in the area. Ishmael charitably offered to share it with him; Venom considered, briefly, asking him what his new outfit had against Cipher before abandoning it as a stupid question - any man or woman who'd survived the fall of the MSF would be out for their blood, given half a chance.

The only problem was that it was also outside his own AO. 

"That's the good thing about being a commanding officer," Ishmael informed him, "You get to decide your own area of responsibility."

Venom didn't, though. Not really. He decided the when, where, and how. His subcommanders decided the what. He knew that was backwards from what it should be by any military standards, but they were hardly a conventional force. A conventional force would see him locked away in an office back on Mother Base, his rawest recruits out here in the field to gain experience. He wondered, not for the first time, if Kaz ever missed it: sleeping under a clear night sky to wake with a sheen of frost on his boots, the endless miles of marching, the taste of rations. Freedom.

He reached for his iDroid while Ishmael waited with his arms folded; the bemused posture of a man watching his friend call home on a payphone to tell his family he was stuck at the office before they went out for a wild night on the town.

"No signal," Venom sighed. Still out of range. He hoped they weren't worried about him. He hoped Pequod had stopped circling and gone back to the refueling point for some much-deserved R&R. 

"Me neither," Ishmael shrugged. "Next tower's twenty miles out - if you want to call your sweetheart you'd better start walking." He nodded back in the opposite direction.

"No, no." Venom waved him off. Turned off the iDroid and brushed past him, resolute. "It's fine." They managed things without him for nine years. One night wouldn't hurt.

Unlike him, Ishmael kept to the high ground. Venom had to admit it was faster than back-tracking to pick his way around the foothills. At least, on foot. Strange to see the world from what had to be Quiet's perspective: the tops of helmets, the roofs of cars. Eye-to-eye with lookouts in towers whose own gaze swept the roads below. And why wouldn't they? They were looking for a man who never came up here. Only a few times did line of sight force them to drop to the ground. To lay flat, while Quiet covered them.

The high ground offered a spectacular view of the dawn. 

"I bet you get up to some riveting conversations, between the two of you," Ishmael remarked as Venom watched brilliant red soak through violet stones, bathing the three of them in light before the excess spilled over into the channels and valleys below. Crimson waves chased away by gold. Silence felt natural. "You got any music on that thing?" He reached for the player before Venom could stop him or answer, though he moved to do neither. "Here, patch me in."

Ishmael pressed play when both of them were on the same frequency; the alien sound of his own voice guffawing with unrestrained laughter. 

_Dancing with tears in my eyes  
Weeping for the memory of a life gone by--_

_\--If I, I get to know your name  
Well if I could trace your private number, baby--_

_\--We're leaving together  
But still it's farewell--_

_\--Looking out a dirty old window  
Down below the cars in the city go rushing by._

"I feel like a cold-blooded _warrior_ right now." Ishmael squeezed his shoulder, his own still shaking. "Is this what you listen to to get pumped up for a mission, or do you listen to this while you're working?"

"I was in a nine-year coma," Venom replied defensively. "I'm trying to catch up with the times. This is what people listen to these days."

Certainly that. Certainly not that the catchy, synthetic beats were a welcome distraction from the rest of his reality. Certainly not that he scavenged these out in the field and didn't want to bother Kaz with anything as trivial as ordering music he shouldn't be listening to during missions anyway. And certainly not that older music sometimes made his mouth dry and his skin prick with dead, desiccated memories itching just below the surface that refused to come to the fore.

_Different part of the brain,_ Ocelot had explained to him. _Scents, tastes, touch, music - they all have different pathways than simple visual or auditory recall._

Something about that didn't seem quite right, but what did he know? He'd never studied neurology. Certainly not in the depth Ocelot had. So Venom avoided old music. Anything post-crash was on the table, anything released prior to 1976 went into the trash.

"Fuck the '80s, then. Let's go back to the '60s." Ishmael hit play on his own device before Venom could stop him.

A keyboard. A bass guitar. Venom felt nothing. Quiet tilted her head quizzically; it occurred to him that she might well be too young to remember much from the era in question. "You'll like this one," Ishmael assured her, "Iron Butterfly."

To Venom he said: "Nostalgic, huh? Here you are again: one of three in paradise."

It took him a second to realize what Ishmael was talking about. Operation Snake Eater. Himself the Snake, the infiltrator in Paradise with to tempt the rest with forbidden knowledge. EVA, the Chinese-turned-KGB agent who'd stolen it from him in the end. And ADAM, the NSA codebreaker who'd never showed. "I think there were only two of us, back then."

"Sounds about right," Ishmael released him, and started off again toward the sunrise as the guitar faded to haunting synthetic notes and steady drums.

Venom wouldn't call this paradise. No sane man would. It was mountainous barren desert, scorching hot during the day and numbingly cold at night, dry enough to choke the life out of the dirt. This was a land where the inhabitants scratched out a living by bloody, broken fingernails. A land where empires went to die. 

They were a hairsbreadth from being discovered and shot at any given moment - Venom was sure beyond doubt that one of the passing patrols would simply look _up_ when he scuffed a boot or got winded trying to make a jump between cliffsides Ishmael landed with ease, but they never did. When outposts were unavoidable his companion revealed that his loadout was the mirror opposite of his own: one suppressed tranquilizer pistol amongst an array of lethal firearms. He'd slipped into their wordless habits; signalled with a gesture that he would flank it and approach from the south while Venom would move along a ditch from the north, under the watchtower. Quiet would provide overwatch, though that went without saying.

Venom eased the pack off gratefully. Lowered himself to the level of the road via a crack in the rocks and did his codename credit: crawled along out of sight, past the guard tower, behind a concrete roadblock. Now to wait until their backs were turned. Tedious, at times, but he'd learned patience. Boredom was preferable to disaster; to fleeing under a hail of bullets.

He heard Ishmael's footsteps. _What's he doing?_ Heard his voice, simultaneously through his earpiece and out loud in flawless, fluent Russian. 

Which meant that Venom had no idea what he said. But it got them all to turn around. Every one of them. Just like that. He sauntered up in his spetsnaz fatigues, weaponless and nonchalant, one hand raised.

"Now. _Fire_." Venom hissed to Quiet and aimed for the vulnerable spot on the backs of their necks, below the helmets they'd taken to wearing a few months back, much to his consternation. He didn't have to tell her to take out the sentry in the tower first; this was an old, familiar routine. With a twist: Ishmael was going to get gunned down in a heartbeat if they took too long once the bodies started dropping.

No. Wrong. Ishmael wasn't armed. As soon as the bodies started dropping they were going to look directly at _him_.

Which they did, as soon as they heard the first thud and the soldiers started to move, turning this from a turkey shoot into an exercise that _far_ surpassed Venom's skills now that clean head shots were off the table. He ducked back down his roadblock just in time to feel hot steel scald a line across the back of his neck, the bullet missing him by millimeters.

Ishmael shouted something in Russian that made Quiet snort - a sound he'd never heard from her before - and made the rest of them turn back to him just long enough for her to drop another one, and for Venom to dive for a different piece of cover. Something about a sniper? Didn't matter - they were fixed on Venom, now, and Quiet. Ishmael walked up behind one and choked him out while they scrambled around to flank Venom. Scrambled for a mortar.

Venom was perfectly content to go prone behind his concrete saviour and let Quiet mop up the rest. Wouldn't be the first time. Almost certainly wouldn't be the last. Serving as a distraction and offering a few pot shots of opportunity at anyone who got close.

The outpost went still. Ishmael grasped the top of the roadblock, leaning over to look at him. Venom raised his head. Dusted himself off. Ishmael'd traded his optics in for a pair of tinted ballistic glasses when the sun rose; Venom could only imagine the expression he wore now. "Not how you thought the legendary mercenary would operate?" 

"Oh, hell. If I had a dedicated marksman who could teleport following me around I'd be pitching so many tents while she took care of business they'd turn Afghanistan into a goddamn campground." He sounded amused, sure. But if anything else, envious. "I'm surprised you don't just bring a book or something."

Because she could get outgunned quickly if they brought in reinforcements. Artillery. Air support. Because she was ineffective in close quarters, and couldn't follow him inside closed compounds. Because they were a team, not a man who called the shots and the woman who pulled the trigger for him. Not an officer and his personal weapon.

Ishmael helped him up. Helped him back up the cliff, too, where he caught Quiet bobbing her head to the other man's music and shot her a betrayed look; she never did that, to his. Until he caught her fingers moving with it too - not in the aimless way of someone simply enjoying the tune, but up and down with the notes like someone who knew how to play the chords in question.

He made a mental note to add a little more hard rock to his playlist.

As it was Ishmael's taste in music was sufficiently different from his own. It triggered no flashbacks; Venom preferred pieces that incorporated more instruments than guitars and drums, a wider variety of singers than gravelly-voiced men with the range of a single octave. By the time the windswept plateaus brought them within sight of their destination he'd heard so many guitars shredded he could have called an emergency meeting of the UN to save them.

_Some folks were born, made to wave the flag  
Ooh, that red, white, and blue_

The three of them hunkered down in a row a few feet back from the edge of a precipice to surveil their destination. At first, it appeared no different from any other occupied settlement: a smattering of stone and mud brick houses much the worse for wear. A canvas tent, blinding white in the morning sun, beside a modern portable trailer. A single road through the center of town, with a single bridge above a mostly dry creekbed. It wasn't until he switched to optics that unfamiliarity appeared. Isolated clusters of hostile red, but also friendly green. Far too much green.

Women. Children. Unarmed. Everywhere.

For a time Venom _stared_. At little boys tending goats, little girls poking clay stoves to bake flatbread. One of the former yanking the skirt of the former and being swiftly chastised by his mother in Pashto - unintelligible to him now, bereft of mission support - but translation was unnecessary. These were words anyone could interpret. Gestures anyone could understand. 

It took a measure of willpower to tear his eyes away and focus on those red threats. Russian uniforms, Russian language, a small group gathered around a fire that had faded to ash and smoke. No helmets. Weapons slung casually over shoulders or resting an armslength away. Unprepared but not unacceptable. With his communications down no pictures or statistics appeared to tempt him to Fulton any of them. 

It was sharp eyed Quiet who whistled his attention to an even bigger mystery: thick beards, head coverings, and hand-held RPGs on the other side of town. Mujahideen fighters. His iDroid tentatively labelled them friendly. 

"Is that a _Lee-Enfield_?" Awe, curiosity, disbelief, and avarice in equal parts when Ishmael spoke.

Quiet hummed an affirmative. The Mujahideen displayed an electic potpourri of AKs, their Chinese knock-offs the Type 56, a single American M16, and that old, iconic British standby of the late 19th century. A ragtag band of scavenged parts next to the uniformity of the modern military across the stream, but from the few who'd joined the Diamond Dogs Venom knew that dauntless determination was an ever reliable force multiplier. Quiet's next intonation was questioning.

Venom had no answer for her as to why the two groups stood peaceably apart, until he shifted the zoom toward the tent and the trailer. The red cross emblazoned across them as required by the Geneva Convention, the group's own icon stenciled below.

_It ain't me, it ain't me - I ain't no military son  
It ain't me, it ain't me - I ain't no fortunate one_

"The MSF." Venom allowed himself a quiet smile when those words drew the puzzled attention of both of his companions. Turned the radio off. "The _original_ MSF. Médecins Sans Frontières." He cocked his head at Ishmael. "You should remember - we worked with them in Columbia."

"We did?" Ishmael cocked it right back at him.

"We did." Venom nodded. Provided escorts, swapped supplies, talked shop. An ordinary soldier didn't have to keep on top of his organization's interactions with NGOs the way a commanding officer did, he supposed - still, it was _finally_ something _he_ remembered that someone else didn't. A footnote in pages of their battle records, to be sure, but gratifying. There, clear as day, down to the astringent stink of antiseptics.

On the other hand: "How are we going to infiltrate?" Venom wasn't going to shoot unarmed non-combatants full of tranquilizer rounds, and he _definitely_ wasn't going to choke out children.

"We get to play dress up." Ishmael motioned for the bag, which he unzipped. Set the Barrett aside carefully, and pulled out a neatly folded matching set to his own outfit.

"...You made me carry that," Venom protested, as Ishmael unfurled it, crumpled the fabric, and rubbed it in the dust and dirt.

"Lighter than your sneaking suit, trust me. Unless you were planning to ditch that in the wilderness." Ishmael handed it to him, and Venom had to concede that dumping proprietary Diamond Dogs technology in enemy territory, even if he buried it, was liable to be what finally killed Kaz through rage-induced cardiac arrest. "And look, it comes in ladies sizes." Ishmael reached back in again for a smaller set, before pausing contemplatively, "Can she _wear_ clothes?"

"She can." Venom nodded, as Quiet handled the camouflage tan and olive fatigues like they were a claymore. Sometimes he brought her along in an outfit that provided a little more ballistic protection; their firefights were getting hotter and hotter, these days. "She just leaves her face and neck uncovered. Rolls up her sleeves. It's no different from you or I running around in a gas mask."

"That could work. Unlike you, she doesn't have a famous face. Benefits of killing from a distance." He closed the bag, glanced up. "Don't mind me, I'll ju--" Ishmael began to turn around, only to find the two of them half-stripped already. He raised his palms. "Well, all right then. I'm glad you're comfortable." 

Quiet helped peel Venom out of his skin tight suit; it was her or Kaz, otherwise he'd be wriggling around trying to shed it like a real snake for minutes. For him, Ishmael'd brought the same size as his own. He didn't fill it out quite so well, and the pant legs were slightly too short, but as soon as his boots were bloused no one could tell. Venom helped Quiet out with her hair, in turn. It was practical, but not to military standard. He combed and smoothed it out for her with his fingers. Laced it into a short braid, before wrapping the coil in a bun that he tied tightly with her elastic. Pinned her bangs to the side. She huffed; pointed to his own ponytail. He tugged it loose so that the bulge of it wouldn't show beneath his balaclava. 

Lastly, the tinted ballistic glasses. Only for him, unlike Ishmael, he wore them to conceal a trademark, rather than to protect his eyes. 

"Just a couple of faceless goons now, right?" Behind them, it was impossible to tell where Ishmael's gaze fell. "You look good too, Quiet. You'll do at a glance, but if somebody tries to talk to you? Why don't you and Miss Barrett have a little gal time. See if you can't spot anything interesting in the vicinity. Oh, and cover us when the shooting starts. Your Boss and I will see what we can scare up."

Her eyes flicked to Venom, who nodded. He couldn't fault that logic. They could use the warning, and if someone _did_ recognize her? This was a Cipher agent they were on the trail of, after all. Didn't mean that they would necessarily recognize a particular XOF assassin dress like a Soviet soldier on sight, but it wasn't worth the risk. She shrugged; dissipated like the dust across the landscape.

Leaving behind a few faint beats of Ishmael's music.

"How is _she_?" Ishmael asked, tapping the mic at his throat off, as they eased their way down amidst the jagged beige rocks into the valley below, and Venom could _hear_ the grin. 

"You've met her. Pretty much like that." Venom's brows drew together, confused. "Crack shot. Doesn't talk much."

His companion sighed through his nose in a way that was ~~becoming~~ familiar: frustrated, amused, affectionate. "Yeah, you know that's not what I meant."

Oh. Venom'd been working solo - or with horses, dogs, mute women, and unnaturally respectful Russian spies - so long he'd almost forgotten about the locker room talk between squadmates. "I wouldn't know."

"I know what I just saw," Ishmael said in a way that sounded more like 'bullshit'. When Venom shook his head again, he added, "Why _not_?" 

"Was I not with Kaz when you worked for me? I'm still with Kaz." How had he shut this down, in the past? He knew he had. Somehow. Poured words like ice water on the simmering tension between men high on adrenaline, fear, and power. Was it mentioning his relationships with men?

"I hate to be the one to break this to you, but that never stopped Kazuhira Miller," Ishmael chuckled, and Venom's hackles rose before he could quell them with the rational reminder that that was nothing more than the truth: Kaz had never been a one-man _anything_.

Until now. But Ishmael couldn't know that.

"...You've fucked Ocelot, though, right?" Ishmael dragged him, choking and startled, from the uncomfortable silence that followed.

" _No_. Wha- Why-?" Venom tried to make his mouth form the ridiculous words.

"He hasn't sucked you off?" Venom couldn't tell if Ishmael was teasing, or genuinely incredulous, or some measure of both.

"No. No, he has not."

"You haven't sucked him off? After that stunt at the hospital? You're a monster." Ishmael clapped him on the shoulder, laughing quietly, and Venom was ninety percent sure this was ribbing. "You know he'd be interested, don't you?"

Venom nodded yes. He had, in fact, used his well-honed powers of deduction to figure out that the man who'd spent the entire shower Venom had shared in full view of him and several other Diamond Dogs with Quiet staring at Venom might be interested in men. While the others were so uncomfortably aroused by her they'd paced like caged animals, Ocelot had leaned back appreciatively, folded his arms, and never once looked away from his commander's wet torso. 

Ultimately, though, that way lay a burial at sea. After catching them, Kaz would pour gasoline on him, set him alight, and kick him off the command platform. 

_You know Ocelot?_ The stupid question died on his lips. Of course Ishmael knew Ocelot. Ocelot would never have let him anywhere near Dhekelia, otherwise. "I'm running a mercenary force, not a harem."

"Your loss."

"You've done this before." It was both a question and a statement; Venom tried to inflect it to reflect that, to add the layers of complexity the other man could issue when he spoke. The result sounded more like the plea of a man desperate to change the subject.

"Not my usual MO, but yes, I have." Ishmael nodded, graciously obliging. And added, "So have you?" A question and a statement both.

Venom had. Back when _he_ spoke fluent Russian and wasn't hopelessly marked by the loss of an eye, he had. Though it wasn't his MO either. "I'm going to be rusty," he warned. The crash course in espionage and interacting with locals Ocelot had given him during their long boat ride east would have to be enough.

Lie with the truth. Walk with purpose. Don't invent pretenses unless absolutely necessary - go with the assumptions others make about you.

_"Spy 101, huh."_

_"No, more like Spy Preschool. Don't worry, Boss. I'll graduate you from Spy Kindergarten before we're done here."_

It was strange to enter an occupied location that wasn't the Diamond Dogs' Mother Base and not have to creep around in the shadows, head down, cover to cover. To have passersby glance up and look back down again - no gasp, no cry of alarm - muttering in Pashto or Dari or Russian, or saying nothing at all. Stranger still that some of them were women. 

No, scratch that. As he and Ishmael made their way noticed but not recognized to the center of town, Venom came to the realization that they were _all_ women. All of the adults. The Mujahideen and Red Army soldiers kept to the outskirts of town, which was why they were drawing as much attention as they were. They were far less avoidant of him than he'd been led to believe, too; they tolerated his and Ishmael's presence the way one tolerated a screaming baby on airplane. It wasn't anybody's fault, and in your weaker moments you fantasized about punting it out of the cabin, but in the end you grit your teeth through passive-aggressive resentment and endured. 

Or offered to help, if you were V--

"Christ," Ishmael hissed under his breath as they passed a boy with legs so bowed he could barely walk, tottering along after his mother. She froze, cognizant of their attention. His spine curved wickedly; Venom could make out the deep, telltale groove of ribs dented into the center of his chest through his thin shirt.

"He'll be fine," Venom smiled. For reassurance, and at the crack in the other man's nonchalant bravado. "It's just vitamin D deficiency. Here." He got down on one knee. Reached into the pocket at his hip. The protein bars the Diamond Dogs packed for him were fortified with it - too many night ops, these days. He was sure the MSF were already giving him supplements, but this would taste better. Chocolate and blueberry. "He'll grow out of it." 

Venom spoke neither of the local languages, but his intentions were clear enough and the boy had clearly received enough help from foreign strangers not to pass up the opportunity for something that must have looked to him like sweets. When Venom held it up, palm open, he snatched it away. Then mumbled something, before retreating with his mother.

Venom cocked his head curiously. "He called you an infidel and said he was going to murder your family when he grows up," Ishmael told him.

Venom's face fell. "Really?"

"No, not really," Ishmael shoved him playfully. "He said thank you. And lower your voice if you're going to use English, you moron."

Venom was about to ask him what he wanted him to use - his native tongue was the only one to survive the crash, after all - when one of the doctors took notice of them. Her head was covered in compliance with local custom, but her face was not. Dark curls, dark eyes, tan boots bought off a shelf back in a first world country; high side of fourty, pretty smile. She said something in Russian, and it took Venom a second too long to realize it was addressed to _him_. 

His mouth went dry; Ishmael put him out of his misery by answering for him. She spoke again, much louder this time. Venom... nodded?

"We also... speak some English," Ishmael informed her in a Russian accent so believable that, between it and the outfit, Venom could just about Fulton him. He lowered his voice, too. So that it wouldn't sound so similar to Venom's, like a brother's, like how people sometimes mistook ~~his~~ one brother's voice for another on the phone.

"Oh, thank god." She sighed with nervous relief, still smiling. She had the faintest of French accents. "I came to ask you, could you please wait for the evening? I can see that you're new here - this is how things are done. They need time in the day for their families." 

"Yes." Ishmael nodded obligingly. "We understand. We will go."

Venom understood 'spasiba', at least. She thanked them with it and turned to follow the boy and his mother; glanced over her shoulder, once, to make sure they'd done as she asked. "What did you say to her?"

"I told her she'd have to speak up, because you used to be an artillery man," Ishmael hauled him to his feet with an arm around his shoulders. Mimed dragging a reluctant friend away under her watchful eye. "How long have you been operating here? How do you speak _no_ Russian? You're lucky hers is terrible. I think she thought you just couldn't understand her."

"I've been busy." And lazy: with simultaneous interpretation on demand learning any language himself was a low priority. Seemed foolish, now, with no uplink. That, and the one small, niggling part of him that fantasized about those languages simply coming back to him of their own accord. Saving him the trouble.

"Well, it means you're not going to be much use anywhere but with the docs. That's your assignment, then. Figure out what they know. I'll case the buyers - might need a little help from Quiet with the suppliers. We'll see."

The word, "What," slipped out of Venom before he could swallow it, at the risk of coming off as profoundly stupid. None of that made any sense to him. The doctor's request made no sense to him either. 

"Exactly what," Ishmael asked him, with that same amused, frustrated affection, "Do you think this town's main industry is?"

The women. Unescorted and unabashed to be in his presence. The children. So many of the youngest pale-haired and pale-eyed. The restless truce between the Soviet soldiers and Mujahideen in neutral territory. Venom _was_ an idiot. And there was a rush of heat down his neck that made him grateful for the balaclava; even more grateful that Ishmael'd taken the role he could never do while Venom's job would be to chat up a handful of well-educated, unarmed friendlies in his native language. 

"I'm on it." 

He could, couldn't he? It was only after he and Ishmael parted ways, and Venom took the long route around the town to the MSF station, that he began to doubt himself. _Former artillery man, huh._ Coming up with excuses on the fly had never been his strong suit, and he knew less than nothing about artillery - he hadn't even fired or aimed a mortar since

She'd taught him to. His only hope would be that the doctors knew even less about that than he did. Which, in Ishmael's defense, they... probably did.

He pulled the tent flap aside and slipped in quietly, so as not to disturb her work. There were no patients in at the moment; she was packing and labelling boxes - shouldn't there be a nurse or a medic here to do that? - and when she finally noticed him, an armslength from her, she _jumped_ , dropping one.

"Sorry," Venom murmured, feeling like an asshole, and knelt to help her put everything back together. She backed off immediately. Eased around him like a child might around the limits of an angry dog on a chain to reach the flap of the tent, which she tied wide open. Prophylactics, basic first aid supplies. All of it packed, so he hadn't gone and ruined it all, at least.

"It's fine," she offered kindly, lying about as well as Venom usually did. "Did you need something?"

_Lie with the truth._

"His mother..." He pretended to struggle for words. His Russian accent was passable, he thought. He'd interacted with enough of them to know; they made up some sixty percent of his intelligence division, at last count. "...When she smiled at me--" He rolled his balaclava up far enough to mimic a fasciculation. "Are you treating her, too?"

"Oh." She visibly relaxed. "You're a medic?"

"Yes," he lied, though he felt more confident about faking it than he did a bombardier. Or should he have said 'da'? ...No. Why would any Russian say that, when they were certain know the word 'yes', if they spoke any English at all? That kind of thing was for the movies, Ocelot had taught him: to add authenticity, one of the few words the audience would know.

He hated this. Any one of his men would be better at this than he was. Ocelot certainly, and Kaz possessed an eloquence he did not give himself enough credit for, Venom feeling nothing more than an empty, silent figurehead beside him during his rousing speeches. In the shadow of the real heart and soul of the operation. A name could only do so much; a decade's worth of blood, sweat, and toil made the Diamond Dogs Kaz's men.

Kaz... How he wished he were here now.

She thankfully mistook his discomfort for concern. "Ah. No, I have not been. But I will. Those two were hiding in caves for almost a year before they found this place." That would explain it. She came a little closer when he showed no sign of doing anything but helping her put the boxes back in order. "Can I say it is unusual for one of you to bother?"

A loaded question, but he'd already figured out an explanation for it. He'd keep lying with the truth. "No. No. Not me." He shook his head, not having to feign much embarrassment. "I Came here for him. I have a wife, back home. I will not be buying anything," he assured her with absolute sincerity.

"Ah." She crossed the distance between them, at last, and returned to her work. But first she offered her hand. "Colette Dubois." A dangerous gesture outside, safe and welcoming in the artificial sanctuary they now stood under.

Venom had a whole roster of Russian names to choose from. "Alexei." Like most special forces, real spetsnazovtsi would never given their surnames. "Pleased to meet you, Dr. Dubois."

"Colette," she corrected. "If you're looking for a way to pass the time, I could use your help."

Venom would, frankly, love to - trust-earning was an important part of maintaining a cover, Ocelot had told him, so why not? He nodded, and she handed him a box. Gauged his strength, and piled four more on. "Hand these out. One to every household. Bryce will help you."

Bryce, he gathered, was the man he nearly bumped into on the way out, dressed in a gas mask, shorts, and a sweat-soaked undershirt. Two of these he tore off on his way in. "One of the Russians isn't stealing our shit, is he?"

Passable gym body. Venom'd give it a high seven. "No, he is helping me. Like you said you would an hour ago. Bryce, this is Alexei. Alexei, Bryce."

"Hello," Venom mumbled from behind the boxes.

"Hi," Bryce waved, dumping cold water over his head. "Look, I caught my second wind and just kept going. It's not like we've got hard timings here, okay? No patients? Just gimme a sec."

Venom would have guessed him to be security personnel, until he started pulling scrubs on. _He's a nurse,_ Venom knew immediately, though he could not for the life of him describe how he knew. He also knew that he had all kinds of opinions about nurses, but not a single one came to mind. A Beretta in a thigh holster followed, then a tactical vest for reasons Venom couldn't even begin to guess.

Bryce tried taking five boxes. Then four. Settled on three. "Hey, what if something happens?"

_We'd drop the boxes and shoot,_ Venom thought but did not say.

Because this was nostalgic. Comfortable. He didn't have to speak Pashto to hear gratitude, and it was nice to be a welcome sight on someone's doorstep. He caught sight of Ishmael maneuvering his way around the campfire, while several of the other Soviet soldiers postured like some men do when threatened, refusing to rise to any of it. A glint, too, just for him when he scanned the horizon. Quiet was watching.

"You're spetsnaz, right," Bryce observed, proud that he could identify the outfit, and carried on without waiting for an answer, "Yeah, we get a couple of guys like you every week. I worked with the French Foreign Legion, too, back in Mali. How do you think you'd stack up against those guys? I mean they're no Green Berets, but I think of all the airborne..."

Venom tuned him out. Yes, this was nostalgic. He'd known support personnel just like him before. The pointless vest, the gas mask PT. One of the medical staff of the MSF - _his_ MSF - had been just like this: special forces this, special forces that. Always trying to train with their front line troops. Playing with every gun. _The Combat Pharmacist,_ Venom thought he'd called him, but something about that never seemed right. It didn't sound like the kind of name he'd come up with. Kaz, maybe?

Now he knew: that was what Ishmael'd dubbed him. He'd mistaken it for his own voice. Just cruel enough to take the piss out of him for the other medical staff, not condescending enough that the Combat Pharmacist himself hadn't liked it. For all his quirks, that was one of his men.

He was dead. He'd been on Mother Base that night, so he was dead.

That should have been enough for him, but Venom'd known him personally. So he'd asked Kaz. They'd moved every patient they could off base, of course. That left the ones they couldn't move, the ones in need of intensive care. Helpless. There should have been a doctor there with him that night, but for some operational requirement Venom couldn't recall the details of, there wasn't.

He'd gone down fighting after all.

Hadn't even asked to try to escape like Kaz had.

Venom would have done the same. If it'd been him. If he'd been on duty that night and someone had attacked his ward. Why he would be he didn't _know_ but the idea was intense enough to squeeze his heart like a vice, resentment boiling into rage so powerful it tasted like _hate_ and he knew that if he wasn't careful he'd be as consumed by it as Kaz was. He'd gladly _murder_ every one of those XOF soldiers while they _slept_.

_Breathe. Let it go. There's nothing you can do for them now._

Ocelot, as always, the voice of reason. The one who walked him back to humanity when his thoughts and Kaz's _need_ for revenge took him somewhere dangerous. Somewhere he might not come back from. And Venom was grateful for having such a reliable old friend.

He shouldn't be off in these dark places at all. He should be here, present. To take notice of all of the things Colette might have missed in every home; spoiled food, coughs, squints, hand tremors. Signs of early but serious childhood diseases.

When they got back Colette had patients. Sick kids; probably just a flu or cold but she wasn't taking any chances. Bryce dropped his machismo like he had the gas mask to help out. Venom offered his help, too: there were certain things he would have been trained to do as a combat medic, and he guessed correctly that he could fake them. Solo missions required that be able to treat himself.

Take temperatures, administer vaccines. Carefully record who had had what, and when, and any side effects while Colette - who spoke Pashto - took histories. In between and over a lunch of local meat and rice mixed with dried fruit and powdered milk from rations, she explained to him that they'd been here for the past few months. The Soviets wouldn't allow them inside their territory; the Mujahideen would, but that would be taking sides, in effect. This place was ideal: a collection of women who'd lost their male relatives in war, or who'd been assaulted by the soldiers on either side and thus driven out of their homes. The armed combatants tolerated it so long as the MSF would treat their soldiers when asked; though their men were explicitly ordered not to come here Venom knew from experience that would be as good as ordering cats off a countertop. The second their officers' backs were turned, here they'd be.

"Sounds like a difficult place to be posted," Venom observed sympathetically. They were direly understaffed, but that would be business as usual.

"I have Bryce to protect me," she said, and he beamed, oblivious to her wry smile. "Besides, the women here - they trust me."

He'd left the tent to fetch some water when Ishmael, seized his waist. "Hey, Lyosha." He smelled invitingly of cigar smoke and alcohol; his balaclava was rolled up, too, to reveal facial hair a shade lighter than Venom's own, streaked heavily with grey. "You know when you come up with a name, you should tell me what it is, right?"

Venom observed that he'd seemed to work it out for himself, regardless. "And what should I call you?"

"Sasha," he told him, and when he exhaled Venom wanted to breathe it in. The late stages of nicotine withdrawl; where was Kaz, to smack his hand away? Sure: Alexei and Alexandr. "What have you been up to?"

"Making friends."

"I see that. I saw the Combat Nurse running a couple of miles off."

Venom shook his head. "Doesn't work. Combat nurse is a real thing."

"Yeah? If you say so." Ishmael squeezed his waist, grinning. "What's in the trailer?"

"No idea. Supplies, I assume. Or where they sleep. This isn't exactly the safest place in the world. It's locked."

"Just as easy to get shot in a trailer as it is in a tent."

"She's not afraid of being _shot_. She's an attractive woman, and this place is..."

Ishmael shrugged. "If you say so. She's easy on the eyes, I guess. Always kind of had a thing for blondes..."

Venom did not need to point out that Quiet was not blonde, and Ishmael had most decidedly not turned his back when offered a show. "Okay." That said, he wasn't about to get into particular, quantifiable specifications of their attractiveness, either, which was probably where this was going.

It wasn't, though. "You _like_ women?" Ishmael asked, then winced as though he immediately regretted it.

Venom sighed. It was fine. He was used to assumptions, by now. He'd been called all _kinds_ of things after making his relationship with Kaz public. Semi-public. By men he'd slept with in the past, no less. People were capable of any rationalization imaginable when it came to sex; had that been something Ocelot had said, or Kaz? Didn't matter. The presence of enemy combatants side-by-side in this place was proof enough that it was true. "Yes, I do. I just have... tastes."

The coy flirtatious kind most men seemed to favour did absolutely nothing for him. No, when it came to women, what really got his blood pumping was bold confidence, open sexuality, a hint of risk - in essence, Eva.

_Women who could push a man down and take what they wanted. Who handled dangerous machines like they could, would handle you given half the chance._

"Whoa, settle down there. I see that." Ishmael yanked him back from wherever he'd been once again. Back into a body whose skin was flushed and blood was draining downward. "Get back in there before you start asking me for money."

He left Venom, short of breath and suddenly lonesome, humming a tune he'd never heard before but reminded him of Ocelot watching the waves westward.

He'd remember him before Ishmael told him who he was, Venom decided. They were there, those memories, under the surface. Beneath an ocean of salt water, burning wreckage, and a thin film of blood and helicopter fuel. He could feel them. One had already slipped out; backwards and by proxy, but it _was_ him, it was _his_ voice even though his memories told him it was his own, that was a lie.

Colette and Bryce were discussing treatment options for acid burns; skin grafts were of limited applicability here in these less than sterile conditions. That was well beyond Venom's pay grade as an ostensible medic, so he offered no opinion. Tried to inch his way through his own damaged mind while they kept his hands busy, avoiding pitfalls and pain and blackouts.

What was it Ocelot had said about touch, and sound? He could hear the hard jungle rain, feel it tepid against his skin, smell the fresh damp earth. A rough canvas cot; luxurious. This must have been before Mother Base. He was the CO, he would be spoiled with the closest thing to a bed, no? Ishmael's breathing. Something about this was very important. Something about this had left a dead weight in his chest. His eyes had been damp. That utter emptiness.

He'd told him.

He'd told him about the shot that had brought his old life to an end and left a hole inside of him that lingered to this day, refusing to be filled.

_SHE WAS A PATRIOT._

How it still rang in his ears.

And Ishmael had told him he understood, that he shared the same pain, and

_I would follow you anywhere._ A voice so expressive it had to be Ishmael's.

Followed by the sickening guilt that they'd been lovers, before Kaz. It wasn't so hard to read between the lines. They'd been lovers, and he didn't even remember the man's name.

He was languishing in those numb, dreamlike memories when a distant roar rocked the landscape. He and the MSF staff were so accustomed to the sound of munitions that none of them reacted to it until a woman burst into their tent, babbling words in a high-pitched panic. Colette leapt to her feet and hurried after her; Bryce shot Venom a questioning look when he wordlessly followed. Both of them hopped into the back of their truck while Colette drove, uttering soft reassurances to what had to be a mother.

They slid to a halt on the sandy road just above a small depression filled with wildflowers. It was a low enough that the roots of the plants must have fed off the moisture or mist from the stream below. Tempting bright splashes of colour amidst the dull tans and faded desert greens; Venom, too, might have made the same mistake.

A child's pained, frightened cries. Venom knew exactly what he was going to see.

"Fucking _mines_ Jesus Christ fucking commie _bastards_ ," spilled out of Bryce while Venom and Colette surveyed a little girl with what wasn't a complete amputation of her left leg at mid-thigh. The muscle was shredded on the inside and there were wet pieces of bone bent sharply outwards through them that promised a comminuted, open fracture of her femur. The rest of the leg clung stubbornly to her body.

He heard Colette's low exhalation of dismay just before he saw it himself: the sheer volume of blood loss, the intermittent gush of it that pooled around her hips. The girl's femoral artery was damaged. Colette started forward and Venom had to hold her firmly by both shoulders to stop her. "Stay here. Tell me what to do." Bryce tossed him his kit, wide-eyed.

His uplink was down. No convenient HUD to mark the mines for him, and no DD to sniff them out. There were ways you could move across a minefield safely - on your hands and knees, shifting the sand ahead of you lightly with the former - but they were painstakingly slow, and the girl didn't have that kind of time. Venom started forward before he could think better of it. Could remind himself that there were hundreds of people waiting for him, relying on him back home.

In that moment it didn't matter.

He kept to the rocks as best he could but there were only so many, and if he tripped and fell off one that would be many times the surface area of his feet to impact the ground. And trip he would, this high on adrenaline, thinking every step would be his last and that if it was, ending up the mirror image of Kaz was the best he could hope for.

A flicker of green light. A dot, drawing his attention down to an unnaturally circular lip the size of his fist, two steps in front of him.

Quiet hadn't taken her eyes off him.

Venom couldn't find the words to express his gratitude; if he could, she wouldn't hear him anyway. So he simply looked up in the direction the light came from and nodded. Watched for the dot and picked his way around to the girl in seconds.

Calling for her mother. Delirious with shock, soaked with sweat. He fell to his knees and set the bag down beside him. There was nothing he could give her for the pain until she was stable; he stroked her wispy, damp braided hair back from her face to calm her before snapping gloves on.

Colette was asking him if artery was exposed; he shook his head, no. She told him that he would need to make an incision. He knew that. He wasn't just going to jam his hands in and feel around, and the muscle was already torn so badly it would have to be reattached anyway.

She was telling him to cut medially, not laterally, but he'd already done that. Common sense. His hands were moving of their own accord, his mind was somewhere back in Colombia under warm, misty rain. His heart was with this girl's mother, forced to watch what she thought to be a foreign invader try to fix the damage his own people had caused.

She was telling him to look for bone fragments; when she saw that he already had one in his forceps she stopped talking. Its own jagged edge had ripped along the blood vessel in far too long and traumatic a line for the artery to retract under its own power. He clamped it shut and started on the ligature. There was movement in peripheral vision; irrelevant. He cut the thread. Checked her breathing. Pulse.

She reached out and touched his hand.

"We'll take it from here." A light, delicate weight on his shoulder. Colette.

Venom blinked, sitting back on his heels at last. Behind him the trail he'd taken had been carefully marked. There were small red flags next to the mines Quiet had spotted nearby. Soviet soldiers and their own vehicle. Ishmael leading them, moving through the minefield properly, like Venom should have. They followed his directions without question.

How? To him, seconds had passed. Yet Bryce was behind him with a stretcher, ready to help him maneuver her onto it while Colette carried the blood bag she'd inserted into the girl's arm. "I'll finish up." His faint smile was friendly enough, but the way he looked at Venom had changed utterly. He couldn't tell if it was in a good way or not. He looked grateful, impressed - but something had happened and they were no longer peers.

Colette simply looked grateful and impressed. "You should rest a while," she advised him.

_My colleagues will be my sisters and brothers._

He'd promised someone that, once.

He really began to wonder how poorly he must look when Ishmael approached him, too, before Venom joined the rest of the medical staff for the ride back, and risked quiet English, "You going to be okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine." _I'm fine_ , Venom had almost lied. _Lie with the truth._ "It's only battlefield medicine."

In truth his head was light and full of fuzz. He kept hearing the Colombian rain. Tap tap. Tap tap. A non-stop patter. Was he in shock? Was he simply crashing from all the adrenaline? The sun was low in the sky by the time they returned to the village, threatening to slip below the cliffs and plunge the valley into indigo shadow.

_I would follow you anywhere._

A single gunshot and his whole life had changed. No, it had died there. He'd been reborn a husk; the reverberations still echoed through the empty space left behind.

Venom watched them in a daze as they cleaned and covered her wounds. Replaced her fluids and gave her preventative antibiotics. A gentle touch on the back of Colette's hand while he passed her an instrument told him that Bryce was attracted to her, too; Ishmael's thumb circling on the small of his back _burned_

Because he'd stroked it along his lower abdomen that night and it had been

"You want to get something to eat?" Venom jumped - he was alone in the tent, save for the girl - the two of them had probably left to get supplies and he _hoped_ they weren't relying on him for her care in the interim. "Come join us," Ishmael offered.

"Yeah." Venom's response was automatic. When he rose to leave, though, the girl whimpered. "In a while," he added, and Ishmael left him, respectfully.

"You'll be okay," Venom told her pointlessly. She couldn't understand him. He understood her, though, and the way she couldn't even bring herself to look down at her leg. She knew. In this war torn country, she would have seen enough amputees to know.

He glanced around quickly to ensure that no one was watching, then eased the glove off his left hand. Flexed his metal fingers for her. "You'll be okay," he repeated. He spun it for her at the wrist, and she smiled.

He quickly replaced the glove when he heard footsteps approaching. "She needs surgery," he said to Colette.

"I know. We're taking her to Kabul in the morning." Venom agreed with the call. She was stable enough for that.

"Do you want to have dinner with me?" Venom asked her, anticipating Bryce's frown. That would mean he'd have to stay here with the girl. And the chance, however slight, that Venom had a less than professional interest in Colette. _If I wanted that I could buy it,_ he thought. But so could Bryce, and yet, he hadn't.

Some could separate sex and intimacy so well they never loved anyone they slept with, and could love someone they never had. For others, like Venom, the two were so inexorably linked he couldn't pull them apart no matter how hard he tried.

He'd asked her to come with him because he no longer trusted himself around Ishmael.

"Well, as long as you're there," she agreed, "I suppose it'll be all right?"

The Soviet soldiers had rebuilt their fire, and the wind that carried it in their direction smelled like the intel platform after they'd raided the mess supplies. Ocelot would proclaim innocence; Kaz and the rest of the support staff would declare war for a few weeks, try to starve them out; the intel staff would smuggle them some contraband from the outside world and all would be forgiven. Until it happened again, a few months later.

Ishmael was inside the circle, now. Sitting at the center, gesturing, and more than a few howled with laughter when he spoke. Venom couldn't tell what they were saying, but he caught a few mentions of his fake name in what sounded like praise. He didn't need to understand when they shoved a bowl of thick stew into his hands, and a cup of what he was sure wasn't water; he was welcome, too. They gladly doled some out to Colette, who hovered at - slightly behind - his shoulder. 

Quiet joined them. She made an obliging show of walking all the way up. Declined the food. Looked utterly unsurprised when their reactions were of extreme interest, even though Ishmael had clearly explained to her presence to them somehow. Like Colette, she was pretty; pretty, but also _young_. 

All it took were a few shoves from Ishmael that almost knocked men off their feet and his arm around her shoulders to dissuade them from pursuing their course of action. His body language was clear: nobody was to talk to his woman.

_Why did you come?_ Venom wanted to ask her. She didn't eat, and she didn't talk. She had no love for Soviet soldiers. She took the spot next to Ishmael - close enough to hear everything, far enough away to watch the both of them.

Venom and Colette made small talk while they ate. "So, you were a doctor before you joined the army?" She inflected it, though it didn't sound like a question. "A surgeon."

"Yes," Venom lied. Noticed that Ishmael was watching him. 

"Hmm. An interesting decision." 'Interesting' didn't sound like the word she wanted to say. "Bryce tells me you're some kind of special forces? I thought spetsnaz wore hoods. Masks."

Venom had no idea what she was talking about; Ishmael cut in to spare him. "That is intelligence services spetsnaz. KGB. GRU."

"What's the difference?" 

"We are real soldiers." Ishmael shrugged confidently. "They are assholes."

Ocelot was probably the most even-tempered, helpful man Venom had ever met. Was that supposed to be funny? He wasn't drunk enough to laugh yet. He shouldn't drink on a mission, but on this particular mission that might well blow his cover. He tilted the cup toward Ishmael, who nodded, tossing one back himself. Venom cringed; the taste was so bad it burned all the way down his esophagus and slowly soured everything he'd eaten. 

He downed the whole thing and held it out for another.

"If it's not out of line..." Colette began, hesitant but warm, "...you make a better doctor than you do a soldier. When the war is over, I hope we meet again. As colleagues." She passed him her drink, untouched. "I have a few rounds to do before it gets dark. Take care."

He watched her go. Wondered how much courage it would take to leave a comfortable, upper-middle class existence in the first world to leave here under threat of capture or death, just to aid those who would never be able to return the favour. "I wish we had someone like her back on Mother Base," he murmured, low enough that only the two sitting next to him could make out his words. 

"You could, you know." Ishmael reminded him helpfully.

"I'm not going to Fulton a civilian non-combatant. The last thing the Diamond Dogs need is to break the Geneva Convention." Worse than they already had, in some ways.

"You could ask her. With words."

It was Venom's turn to snort. Ask her to what? Ply the craft she'd perfected for the good of mankind to help him expand his mercenary empire? Help Kaz turn a profit? Tear down the swiftly rising New World Order? When here she could improve lives in a meaningful way. Save them. Have a child reach out and touch her hand.

Quiet smiled. Pointed to her lips, then to his face.

It _had_ made him happy. Filled some of the empty space that used to house the things his country had ripped out of him along with the one he had loved, admired, more than anything in the world. Who'd guided him. The one he wanted to be, breathlessly, with everything he had. In the cruelest way. No small part of him wanted to stay here. He _longed_ for it. Away from the pain and death that hounded him ever since he'd awoken, that he could do nothing about. To ease suffering and give life to others.

He swayed. Belatedly noticed that the other soldiers had filtered away. Of course they had. They hadn't come here to chat around campfires. He was all alone with Quiet and Ishmael. Sitting next to him. Warm. And drunk.

"So, how do you know Kaz and Ocelot?" Venom asked, wielding their names like a shield. An unsubtle reminder. But for whom?

"You know how I know Miller. Ocelot? I met him in Russia. We worked a job together. Pretty much what you'd expect." Not so much evasive as dismissive. 

Venom wasn't about to let him change the subject that easily. "You know them now." That wasn't a question: he hadn't forgotten that remark about his 'wife' and his 'girlfriend', as much as the other man seemed to think he had. "Honestly, you seem to know them better than I do, in some ways."

"What are you asking?" Ishmael said cautiously.

"For advice. What do I _do_ with them? They fight like cats and dogs." Not as overt as that, certainly. Hell, maybe that would be an improvement. Their passive-aggressive sniping over the radio made him want to stay out on operations for days, at times. Kaz seemed to start most of it, but Ocelot gleefully fueled those flames.

Feigned ignorance. He knew why they didn't like each other.

"Cats and dogs, huh. Ocelot, I get. But Miller never seemed much like a dog to me." He had his balaclava rolled up so that he could eat and drink; Venom could see the grin. "More like a honey badger."

"A honey badger." Venom repeated dubiously.

"You ever see one of those things? Take on something five times their size. Rile them up with one poke and the next thing you know, it's ripped your face off."

That sounded _nothing_ like Kaz. Besides: "Who would want to _fuck_ a honey badger?"

"Really?" Ishmael seemed taken aback. "Honey badger sounds like my kind of ride. At least you know what you're getting into. It's not going to let you get all comfortable, then knead your nuts."

"Ocelot wouldn't knead my nuts." Would he?

"How do you know? You said it yourself: you never fucked him." Ishmael was clearly joking. 

Wasn't he? "You know that honey badgers eat snakes, right?" Or was that part of the metaphor? "I'd take a nice, soft cat. At least it can't maul me." 

Ishmael nearly spat. "Oh hell. He might spout more bullshit than a PhD in post-modern sociology but he _is_ a twenty-year combat veteran of the GRU spetsnaz and you forget that at your own peril." 

Sure, Ocelot could fight. Venom didn't doubt it. Tame the rest of the time, though. He was dimly aware that the vodka was beginning to taste like water, and that that was a very bad sign, but at least Ishmael looked a little flushed, too. Quiet was watching them both intently, her arms folded across her knees, and he could swear she was on the verge of laughter.

"You know," Ishmael informed him with a slosh of his cup, "Miller told me once that his people - the Japanese - take prospective clients and business partners out for drinks and get them _hammered_ before they seal the deal. He said they believe people reveal who they really are when they're drunk."

_Let me show you the real Kazuhira Miller!_

Venom snorted again, this time with a laugh. Ishmael looked like he was reliving a similar memory - had he been there, that night? Which of those faces at the party was his? Some of them were blurred, but others were in sharp focus. Which one matched the jawline he could see, faintly, in the firelight? He leaned closer, inspecting it, before catching himself and reeling backwards. "W... what's Ocelot like when he's drunk?" Venom asked to cover it. Hoped he hadn't noticed.

"No idea." Ishmael shrugged, and swallowed. "Never seen him drunk."

"Yeah? I guess I've never had drinks with him either." Not that he hadn't asked. Ocelot was all business, however.

"Didn't say that. Said I'd never seen him drunk. I'm not even sure he _gets_ drunk. Just... redder."

"I can hold my liquor." Venom had fourty pounds on Ocelot, besides. Easily.

"Oh, so can I. You have no idea. Don't try it unless you've got medical staff on hand. I'm pretty sure they hooked him up to a vodka IV drip at birth." 

"That's no fun." Venom would have loved to see a crack, any crack, no matter how small in Ocelot's remarkable self-control. But if Kaz couldn't do it snarling and kicking, he doubted he'd succeed with a little alcohol.

"He _does_ get high, though," Ishmael continued, wistfully. "I highly recommend it, if you ever get the chance."

"Oh?" Venom couldn't imagine it. 

"So, we were at this stuffy British society party. Friend of ours was hosting it - long story, not important. Classical music. Ballroom dancing. Small talk. Tiny French dishes you could eat a million of and never get full. Never enough booze to get drunk. We were stuck there the whole _weekend_ and I told him I was either going to start a fistfight or hang myself." Venom thought that sounded like a nice enough time; Ishmael described it like a maximum security prison. "I don't know where he got it, but a couple of lines of coke later I dared him he couldn't blow through a million dollars before the party was over."

Ishmael's speech was only slightly slurred. Venom and Quiet listened with rapt attention. "Never dare... Ocelot to do _anything_. He'll do it. I told him no military hardware and no real estate destruction. Next thing I knew every high class escort in London had showed up to the party and he was drag racing them with all the beautiful cars in the parking lot. Tore the rims right off a Maserati Bora doing burnouts. Passed around charlie like it was candy and the next thing I knew he was balls deep in some admiral of the Royal Navy while I fucked his un-be-liev-ably hot daughter."

Venom's impaired mind could not resolve the image of the Ocelot he knew with the picture Ishmael had painted. He was sure his sober mind couldn't either. Calm, composed, level-headed, sympathetic Ocelot. His counsellor. His old, trusted friend. Like a brother to him. The skinny teen from the photographs might've been impetuous but what Ishmael described was something else entirely. Wild. 

Quiet was chuckling like she believed it, though.

Venom rubbed his temples. No. No, he had no frame of reference for this man. Ocelot liked cowboys. Animals. Wildflowers. He didn't crash supercars at expensive parties and get high with hookers.

"I think he racked up five million before he was through." Ishmael took another gulp, as if toasting him. "He won that one."

"You make him sound like a terrible communist."

"No, he's a great communist. Doesn't understand money at all. He's never had to worry about it - a little surprised K-Miller hasn't killed him already, to be honest." 

Venom pretended he hadn't noticed the slip. "Hm. Can I ask you a serious question? About Kaz."

"Sure." Ishmael's smile faded, and he stared into his cup.

"What was he like, before... after the crash. Like he is now?" Fueled by fury, not hope. So utterly changed.

"Why do you ask?" The topic seemed to make the both of them melancholy; there was something between him and Kaz. Venom knew it. But what? Romantic rivalry? Time shared, in his absence? Time as a euphemism the liquor would not let him sustain. Venom wondered why Kaz would leave someone as bold and charismatic as Ishmael for _him_.

Love? Memories? "It feels like I'm learning to love him all over again."

Ishmael frowned deeply. "...You _love_ him."

"Of course I do." It was Venom's turn to be taken aback. "He's my partner. We're building a future together." _Through our highest highs and lowest lows. Facing our demons, hand in hand._

" _Why_ do you love him?" Ishmael sounded skeptical. Why?

_Because he complements me. Because I want to make him whole again._ But those were about Venom, not Kaz. "Because he's the sun, to me. His anger burns away my weaknesses. His warmth nurtures my strengths."

Ishmael stared at him a while. Knuckles against his cheek. "...Wow. That is... _really_ not something I would ever say."

"I get the impression just, somehow," Venom sighed, "That I am more sentimental than you are."

"Hm. No." Ishmael's smile returned. "Just not that poetic."

"I mean it, though. Sometimes it feels as though he belongs to someone else. To the man I used to be."

"That'd be one hell of an elaborate cuckold fantasy." Ishmael rummaged around in his pocket and pulled out two cigars. Offered one to Venom, whose relief was palpable. His nanny cam was down; the perfect time for a smoke. Only he had nothing to light it with. Ishmael seemed surprised, at that, and fished out his own lighter.

Which he handed to Quiet. She flicked it; held it under Venom's until the end exuded a pleasant orange glow and Venom breathed in with delight. Then she returned it to Ishmael, so he could light his own.

Venom was about to reach for it, offer to do it - it was only polite - but something in Quiet's expression stayed his hand.

"Hm." If she was expecting a reaction, Ishmael declined to give it.

Venom let the smooth taste of the cigar and the heat of the liquor coursing through his veins lull him into a daze. He adopted a posture similar to Quiet's, staring through the flames. Ishmael leaned back with his arms behind his head, eyes on the night sky. Venom wrenched his thoughts away from both of them, intoxicated and treading into dangerous territory.

_God_ Kaz was cute when he was drunk. He'd always been a lightweight, but these days Venom had to all but carry him after a few beers. Did have to carry him, when there were stairs involved. Had carried him. After some party; Ocelot's idea. Back to his private quarters, where they'd spilled onto the bed together, Venom careful to ensure that he didn't fall onto his lover or slam some metal part of his body into him. 

Kaz'd ended up with his face between his thighs. He'd hummed appreciatively upon finding Venom's cock a little stiff from the contact alone. Freed it with one hand, teeth on his zipper. "I don't think I can accept your offer like this," he'd said with the sweetest smile, pale, freckled cheeks flushed. "I need at _least_ a twenty percent increase in volume before we move forward." 

Kaz was good, _so_ good, even sloppy drunk. But like this Venom could hear his soft exhalation to stifle his own gag reflex before he swallowed his tip. Hadn't tried to stop the saliva from dripping from his mouth and smearing his cheeks as he worked, sucking sounds and unabashed noises of appreciation in the back of his throat as Venom's shaft stiffened and throbbed for him. 

Adorably surprised when Venom'd blown his load in under a minute of that attention. Grinning, he'd licked droplets of come off his wet lips and bent back down to clean him with his tongue, coaxing more fluid out by jabbing the tip of it right into his slit--

These were thoughts he needed to be alone with. Desperately. He hoped Ishmael and Quiet would assume he'd gone to relieve himself as he staggered away from the fire into the night, and in a way he had. 

Rolling Kaz onto his back, kissing him, the way his shoulders turned red and he bit his lip when he was close, watching his face. So. Fucking. Handsome. Still. Gorgeous and buried inside the slick heat of his throat or his ass was _heaven_ ; just standing next to Kaz on the platform made him feel warmer.

Kaz snarling. Kaz collapsed at the bottom of a stairwell, _striking_ him with his cane when he moved to help. Kaz refusing to take his clothes off when they slept together. Kaz asking him to do things he didn't want to do. To hurt him.

But what had he expected?

His heart and his head were on the same page. It was his _dick_ that reminded him, traitorously, that he and Ocelot were not, in fact, brothers. That he was _not_ the tall, gangly teen from grainy photographs. He was a grown, confident man who was _clearly_ attracted to him. Who smiled like he knew some secret about him. About everyone. Who did not even try to hide the fact that he had a hard, flat chest - not a gym body but one _earned_ through exertion and if Venom fucked him he'd have endurance like he wouldn't _believe_ \- and when it rained or he worked up a sweat Venom could make out the definition of his stomach. The hollow between his hip bone and the lines of muscle and Venom could tear that flimsy shirt off, grab him by the scarf, and _fuck_ him like so _clearly_ wanted to be fucked...

Hah. No he couldn't. As comfortable and easy as it was to think of him like a brother, he could barely imagine about Ocelot otherwise in the man's own presence without freezing up, or scuttling away. The other man stood more than an armslength away from him at all times. Passed him objects with the handle out, so they wouldn't have to touch.

Ocelot was respectful of Venom's relationship with Kaz, so why couldn't _he_ be? It was pathetic. Surreptitiously walking up the lines of another man's body with his eyes because Kaz was angry and depressed. Because after enduring physical trauma Venom could hardly _imagine_ and a _monumental_ change in lifestyle his body had changed, too.

Guilt was more effective than cold water.

He had other, guilt-free impossible fantasies he could use to push himself over the edge: Kaz and Ocelot realizing that their mutual contempt was the result of mutual attraction. Fevered. Messy. Passionate. Sometimes in the signals room with Venom on the radio, sometimes in Room 101 with all of Ocelot's tools on hand. Sucking mouths and mussed hair; clothing tossed in every direction. Kaz thoroughly enjoyed himself in these. Sometimes Ocelot took the lead - gave him what Venom couldn't. Tied him up and caused him pain and somehow did it without the hateful things Venom could never un-know sucking his arousal down into the same morass as his conscience. Other times Kaz would. He was as good at doling out pleasure as Ocelot was punishment - in a way, didn't that make him even more dangerous?

Other times Venom would walk in on them. Sometimes he'd watch. Sometimes they'd invite him over and they would jerk him off together while they kissed, open-mouthed, red-gloved fingers interlaced with black...

"Need a hand?" Venom's eye snapped open - when had he closed them? - to find Ishmael's face inches from his own. The firelight was a dim beacon, hopelessly out of reach. Just as before, in the road when Ishmael had grasped the shrapnel in his head, Venom knew exactly what the other man was going to do.

And did nothing to stop him.

His breath caught when Ishmael's fist closed around his shaft through the fabric; he covered it with one of his own. Kissed him. It seemed to give Ishmael a half-second of pause, then he returned it with twice the force, gripping the back of his head. His fingers up under the balaclava roughly, to curl in his hair.

_He has two arms,_ Venom thought, through a thick fog of lust and liquor, _and I only have one. Kaz only has one._

"No." Venom could barely form the word against his mouth. Kaz couldn't do this. This wasn't right.

_I would follow you anywhere._

"No?"

 

 

_Hey, settle the fuck down. You see that snake?_ That _snake means hands off, or I_ will _shoot you._

_But Boss, he's one of--_

_I'm pretty sure he knows that. You do know you wandered into red team's dugout, right? Are you lost?_

_You were the closest to my objective._

_Which is?_

_Where your men called for medical assistance._

_I know for a fact you're up to your neck in casualties on your side of the fence, too._

_None of them are as critical as yours._

_And?_

_Aid is given in accordance with need, not nation._

_Hahah, sure. I've heard that one before. But like most pretty words, they vanish into thin air when the bullets start flying._

_..._

_Not for you, huh?_

_If I go out there, will you order them to stand down or not?_

_If you go out there you're going die regardless of what I say. They're bombing everything that moves. It's suicide._

_..._

_..._

_I thought you said this was suicide._

_For you. Not me. Luckily-- nice shot!_

_Anybody could disable a vehicle._

_You'd be surprised. ...Ah. Shit. I don't think..._

_I can save them. Cover me._

_I might have to kill your friendlies to do that, you know._

_If they shoot at medical personnel aiding wounded men, they're no brothers of mine._

_..._

_They're stable. I'll need your help getting them back behind the line._

_...You're pretty good for a medic._

_I'm not a medic._

_...Huh?_

_I'm a surgeon._

_You are at_ least _three stations too far forward down the line, doc._

_..._

_..._

_...Nobody else would come._

_Never seen a surgeon who could shoot like that before. Say, you looking for a new job? Or will you be, when the war's over? Doesn't pay much, but..._

_What's the point in being a mercenary if not for the money?_

_We don't fight for money._

_Then what are you fighting for?_

THIS PAIN IS MINE, AND NO ONE ELSE'S. 

SHE WAS A PATRIOT. YOU TURNED YOUR BACKS ON HER. I WON'T. I WON'T FORGET. I WON'T EVER FORGET.

Venom started awake to the sound of gunfire echoing through his memories. His skull throbbed with it. He felt the recoil against his palm. His thumb rested on the hammer of a phantom firearm. 

He balled his fist to get rid of it. Pressed his knuckles into his forehead. "They killed her."

"No," said Ishmael quietly, from beside him. "You did."

No. No. He was _wrong_. This was all wrong. You didn't cock a Patriot with your thumb. It was a modified rifle. You cocked it with two fingers on the handle just below the rails. "They gave me her uniform."

"No," said Ishmael gently, "They didn't."

He was _wrong_. Venom could remember it. He could remember that it was too big for him and when he held it he knew that he would never measure up to her. "They gave me the flag."

"No," said Ishmael sadly, "She was a traitor. They never gave her a funeral."

NO.

No, he could remember the fabric and the way it felt in his hands. _Why are you giving this to me? I did nothing to deserve this. I haven't given you anything._

_Just promise me one thing. That you'll never become a soldier._

Ishmael's voice.

His own?

"I never promised to do that." Venom wrapped his arms around his knees.

"Okay. You lied to me. You can _not_ handle your liquor." Ishmael knelt in front of him and coaxed his head up. Offered him a cup of water. "Here. If you start crying on me I'm taking you home. And then Quiet'll never fuck you."

Venom gulped it down. It eased the ache in his head and made him feel marginally less like he was going to vomit stew all over Ishmael's boots. "Where is Quiet?"

"Stuck on duty covering our drunk asses because the parasites made her our designated driver." Ishmael made sure he drained it, and poured out another from his canteen. Pressed it to his lips.

"I'm serious." What happened? Did Venom even want to know?

"We had a nice chat."

Venom tried to laugh. "Sure. You used sticks to draw in the sand."

"Settle down. I don't do the nurse thing. Pull yourself together for me, huh?" He eased Venom's ballistic glasses off for him and Venom suddenly realized, like a fool, why he couldn't see a damn thing. Replaced them with his optics, which he switched on for him, and pointed to the cliffs above, outlined in green-silver artificial twilight. "She's right there."

A straight line against the night sky. Venom slumped with relief.

Why?

"That's it. Come back to me. I'm never giving you vodka again."

Venom groaned. He'd what, passed out in the sand? Drank too much - on a _mission_ no less - and had nightmares. Started babbling like a child. Kaz was not going to be impressed. He envisioned Ishmael and Quiet playing rock-paper-scissors over his comatose form; loser had to make sure he didn't drown in his own puke. "I'm sorry. I think - running into that minefield--"

His head had been buzzing. He'd lost time. Classic symptoms of a PTSD episode brought on by situational trauma and even though he should have known better he'd tried to drown it in alcohol. "I'll be fine."

Ishmael pulled him up against his chest and began to rub his neck and shoulders. Venom was feeling almost human again by the time Colette approached. He sat up straighter, surprised. Darkness had well and truly fallen; there was no one else out here. "Alexei. Do you mind walking me back into town?"

Ah. If she was surprised to see the two of them alone together, she was polite enough not to say so. _It's not what it looks like,_ Venom almost said, but it was exactly what it looked like. "Go be a gentleman, Lyosha," Ishmael prompted. Gave him an encouraging push. Venom didn't blame him for trying to get rid of him - they were working here, ostensibly. When had Venom lost the thread of that?

"Of course." He took a deep breath to regain his focus, and stood. No more pretend. No more distractions. Ishmael'd given him a task. He would do it. He guided her along with the help of his night vision, mulling over the ways he might ask her if she knew of any suspicious activities in the area without tipping off whoever they'd come to hunt. If she'd been here months, like she said, she would know everyone in the village. Bryce would probably know all of the regulars. A good place to start.

"So, are you CIA, or...?" With a single question she derailed his train of thought so badly it plummeted into the ravine of all his botched plans. The flaming wreckage was so spectacular he couldn't even bring himself to respond. 

"Your accent slips all the time." Her laughter was light. "You're American."

_Go with the assumptions others make about you._

"...It's not my day job," Venom brushed it off sheepishly. 

"Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't care if you were the president himself. I took--"

"You took a vow to take no sides. I know." Venom's smile was genuine. "I'm not here to hurt anyone."

Colette responded in kind. "I can tell. Thank you. Honestly. All of us out here have to decide what's worth risking our lives for." 

Did they? Most of the people here had that decided for them. Venom's smile faded. He escorted her to the door of her trailer. She squeezed his hand and bid him goodnight. He switched his optics to FLIR. Watched the warmth of her fingerprints slowly fade from the keypad.

"Hm?" Venom squinted. In the lower right of his HUD - his radio was turned off. When had he done that? He'd turned the music off. That was all.

Ishmael's music. Coming in over the radio.

Venom hurriedly switched it back on and just about slapped his forehead. There'd be signals for miles coming through this valley. Unbroken terrain all the way up the road. Sure enough, he had reception here. Probably had since he set foot in it. He braced himself for the torrent of vitriol from his subcommander.

"--message will repeat. If you can hear this, we have helos searching the following grids: X9458, Y1173. X3489, Y9210. If you are within visual range of these grids, signal with smoke. If you have no way of signalling, the helos will move north and west from those positions. This message will repeat."

It wasn't even Kaz's voice. It was Ocelot's second-in-command in the intelligence division. Jaguar. Guilt and worry congealed like a block of ice in his gut and he cleared his throat. "Is this frequency still being monitored?"

" _Boss_!" Jaguar exclaimed. A crackle; an immediate flurry of activity in the background. "Where are you? Are you all right? Do you need a medivac?"

"I'm fine," Venom admitted, now truly sheepish. What was all this about? He'd been gone for what, twenty-four hours? Kaz was going to murder him. "Where's Kaz?" he asked, and hoped the answer was 'sleeping' and not 'sharpening knives'.

Minutes later, he staggered toward the edge of town. Numb. That block of ice gnawing its way through his insides.

When Ishmael approached, he walked right into him. "Mph." The other man caught him by the shoulders. "You okay? I hope you got something good, because most of those russkis have coughed up their life stories to me at this point and I haven't got shit."

"I need to leave," Venom replied mechanically. "I need to go. Now."

"What's wrong?"

Venom told him. A PMC had raided the command platform in force. They still held it. _Kaz_. They had chemical weapons and no one had made it out of there alive. They said they had taken Kaz and Ocelot prisoner but no one had heard from them since. While all of his most highly skilled combat personnel were away on their own missions. While most of his air support was _here_ in Afghanistan because their Boss was MIA.

"That's when _I'd_ do it," Ishmael nodded helpfully. 

"I need to get out of here. They'll pick me up." Back. He had to go back in the direction he came. Back to his AO.

"You know." Ishmael refused to release him. "That a helo is about a hundred times faster than you are. And it's going to take them hours to get here. Hours more to you to get back to your refueling station. More hours for you to return to Mother Base."

"What are you trying say?" Venom asked. He knew, though. In the soothing voice - Ocelot's voice? - that tried to cut through the rising panic, he knew. Walking away was futile, childish. It made no difference. They could just as easily pick him up on the edge of town. Walking away did nothing more than take the edge off the guilt.

"That your troops need a commander. Not a babysitter." How was Ishmael so calm? Because he had nothing to lose? "Don't you trust them? I'm sure you have SOPs for this kind of thing."

Venom nodded weakly. "I put together standing orders after the last time. But I don't think they took an attack on the command platform into account. Why would anyone attack there? It's the most fortified. It's central. Now the rest are cut off from one another."

"I think you just answered your own question. You're dealing with somebody who thought this through. It was either amphibious infiltration or they arrived with one of your own routine supply runs, would be my guess." Of course. Why hadn't he taken that into account? Because the last PF hadn't done it? 

That was what XOF had done. And they'd taken out the whole base. They had no defense against it. Idiotic. 

"Kaz and Ocelot--"

"Will be their exfiltration plan. I wouldn't worry about those two. Miller's a tough son of a bitch."

What? Why would he say that? If Venom had thought running into a minefield was bad, had triggered flashbacks on some level, what Kaz must be experiencing right now would make it look like a tough day in traffic. "No. No, he'll be terrified. You don't understand." Ishmael hadn't seen him break out in a sheen of sweat at the _sound_ of Russian. Hadn't felt him wake in the middle of the night grasping his empty shoulder socket moaning _no no no stop stop stop_ in the most pitiful voice Venom had ever heard.

"Ocelot'll protect him." 

"No he won't," Venom scoffed. Ishmael's said he knew them - did he really? They hated each other.

"He'll protect anything that belongs to you." And yet, he sounded so, so certain.

"Kaz doesn't belong to me." 

"No?"

What was it about him that made Venom question that? "Well, maybe _willingly_. I..."

"I never said it wasn't willingly."

But all this was beside the point. The point was that Kaz was living a nightmare, and Venom could do nothing but sit on his hands. Ishmael'd seized the childish distraction of walking away from him, leaving him face to face with the fact that he had _no idea_ what to do. How to help. Command? Command them to do what? He wasn't a real commander. He was more like a footsoldier - he was boots on the ground. He might order his combat personnel off on a mission, but they decided how they'd do it. Venom listened to the voices on the radio. Now they were gone.

Somewhere amidst the confusion and vacillation, Venom heard Ishmael sigh. He raised a single finger. "Just once. I'm only going to do this for you once. After this, you have to stand on your own two feet."

He took Venom's radio and his earpiece. "Who am I talking to?"

The Diamond Dogs didn't have a conventional military structure. "Jaguar. Ocelot's his one up," was the best he could do.

"Intel's in charge? Where the hell are your combat pers?" 

_Gone. I sent too many away at the same time and they attacked, like vultures. Like XOF._ Refuse to learn from your mistakes and you are condemned to repeat them.

"This is where you're going to pick me up," he heard Ishmael inform him. "In the meantime I need a detailed sitrep. Uh huh. No? Then _get_ in communication with them. One of them should be there with you right now. Yeah, I don't care. He's not your Boss - I am. All right. Good."

Ishmael crouched. Picked up a stick. Sketched lines in the ground, and Venom witnessed Mother Base appear in the dirt. With fortifications. Last known positions. Routes of ingress. "No. Not there. Yeah, I know why you did it. But it's stupid. You'll have a clear shot from the second strut. Increase the pressure incrementally. As soon as you start the clock starts ticking. Two things: a dive team ASAP. Close that route off. An assault team with hostage rescue specialists. Put a demolitions expert on both. I don't care if they're in Africa. Call them back. If he starts mouthing you off about it I'll give him something to put it on."

Venom cringed inwardly; that was going to get back to Kaz. No. He would be _lucky_ if it got back to Kaz. It would mean Kaz had survived. "And stop letting them string you along. Tell them you need to hear from one of their hostages or you'll operate under the assumption that they're both dead and level the place. If they don't play it smart that should give you an idea of where they're holding them. If it's below decks, fuck it, level it. ROEs? Definitely take shots of opportunity. If there're as few left as it looks like, you kill a few, Kaz'n Ocelot might be able to overpower them."

It clicked in Venom's mind that Ishmael was ordering his men to attack them. Dimly, dully, he knew that that was the right thing to do. But there was no way he would have done it. He would have ordered them to sit back and wait for his arrival. Pay ransoms. Gone in himself. Anything to keep Kaz alive. "Okay. I'm going to pass the controller back to you," Ishmael cautioned. "If you need advice, I'll give it, but - after this, you need a refresher in maneuver warfare. Your troops are reacting, not acting. This is tactical kindergarten level shit." 

At least it wasn't tactical preschool. 

"Trained professionals shouldn't wait for dad to come home. We've known decentralized command was a better idea since the Second World War. I know, I know, Miller and Ocelot want to rule the roost while you're gone. _Don't let them._ Miller doesn't know what he's talking about and Ocelot is a _terrible_ officer. You need more men you can trust. This would be over already if they weren't hamstrung by acting like glorified support personnel for you." Venom nodded vaguely; he was right. He'd known he was right for some time now and he'd done nothing about it. He just hadn't wanted the conflict with his subcommanders. "And honestly, Ahab: learn Russian already. Stop getting Ocelot to repeat shit you already know and have him teach it to you."

Venom took the iDroid back, along with his earpiece. Faintly aware that he'd put all of his collected intelligence into the hands of a stranger. Who hadn't even looked at it. Had dressed him down instead, as if their roles were reversed and he were the commander and Venom his lieutenant.

Venom'd deserved every word of it.

Jaguar was providing him with real time updates at the press of a button. It was hard to tear his eyes away. "So now that that's settled, what did you manage to get? And don't tell me 'nothing' - we've been here all damn day."

"I can get you into the trailer." Venom offered. His nerves had settled, somewhat. He could see the time until the helicopter arrived ticking away. There was no use crying over spilled milk; what was done was done, and if all went well it might be over before he got back. If it wasn't, he'd deal with it then. This was a better use of his time than tying himself into knots of worry.

"Oh so can I with a boot and a couple of breaching charges." 

"I mean I know the code. I watched her enter it." Well, not really. She'd covered her hand. But the warmth of her fingertips revealed which ones she'd touched in infrared, and the red splotches faded in the order she'd touched them. "We don't have long to wait until they leave for Kabul. They'll never know we were there."

So, they waited by the dying fire until Colette and Bryce rose, bright and early. Readied the poor kid for transport as dim violet light filtered over the horizon. Quiet was back on his radio, and she hummed questioningly. Venom sighed; Ishmael swore. Colette took a different driver - of course she did, someone would need to stay behind in case there were any medical emergencies in her absence - and Bryce waved them off before heading back inside to finish his sleep. Venom would have liked so, so much to pull this off without knocking out a volunteer nurse who'd put his life on the line to save women and children. 

"Just wait," Ishmael reassured him. Sure enough, in a few minutes Bryce trotted back out with his shorts and his gas mask. "Keep eyes on him Quiet. Let us know when he's on his way back."

They waited until he was out of their line of sight. Venom punched the code in while Ishmael kept watch over his shoulder. A click; the door swung open easily. Subterfuge and espionage both - Venom felt just about ready for Spy Elementary School.

It was exactly what he expected. Two austere cots with sleeping bags behind crates full of medical supplies. A single desk piled high with medical records, some of which Venom recognized from the day before. He'd seen those, written in them. They were nothing special: patient histories, vaccination records, and the like. A few photographs. One a balding man in a suit smiling next to Colette, dressed in an evening gown. Another of Bryce in Africa, with the Red Cross and the French Foreign Legion.

The sole locked container was a refrigerator, powered by their generator. "Those'll be the vaccines," Venom informed him, as Ishmael tried to open it anyway. It was another keypad - it wasn't like he could pick it. 

"I'm kind of done with locks, to be honest." Ishmael told him, and pulled out a cutting torch. 

" _Don't_ damage anything in there," Venom hissed.

"Yeah yeah, I know what I'm doing." He did: he concentrated the flame on the bolt that held the container closed and had it loose enough to yank open in seconds. Still, so much for subtlety. 

Vaccines. Glass vials of clear fluid grouped by disease.

Honestly, what had he expected to find here? The XOF insignia? 'CIPHER WAS HERE' spray painted across the walls? Even if there was some hint here of their presence, Venom was sure that detecting it was beyond his abilities. Maybe if Ocelot were here supporting him, but he _wasn't_. He might not even be alive right now. And without him, what was Venom, exactly?

"What do all these numbers mean?" Ishmael asked him, pawing at them, holding them up to the light. Thawing some of them; Venom wanted to reach over and smack his hand away before they spoiled.

"Those will be serial numbers, dates of manufacture, expiration dates." 

"I... am pretty sure they're not." Ishmael tilted one.

Venom sighed in consternation and snatched it away from him. "Look, _this_ means..." 

What did it mean? Those were penciled on. They hadn't been on any of the vials he'd used. Had they? A-1. He knelt beside Ishmael and sifted through the others. A-2, A-3. B-1, B-2, B-3. All of them in triplicate. A single row of Letter-0 along the bottom, for each. Ishmael scratched his beard.

"It's an experimental protocol," Venom said numbly as he dropped the one he held to the floor. It shattered across Ishmael's boots.

He didn't remember walking over to the desk. The next thing he knew he was standing in front of the books he'd written in. They were all annotated. Everything he'd entered had a reference number next to it. Side effects added that weren't cause by any vaccine Venom had heard of. Progression. Timelines.

Ishmael stood at his shoulder, trying to see what he was seeing. "What's this mean? LD50?"

Venom's sight went black.

LD50.

LD100.

He knocked Ishmael back onto his heels as he spun around, striding toward the door. Quiet hummed a warning.

Venom didn't care. He walked right up to Bryce

"Hey, you guys shouldn't be in--"

Seized him by the neck with his metal arm and dragged him back into the trailer. Threw him onto the floor so hard it winded him and he struggled to get back up onto his hands and knees.

Ishmael kicked the door shut.

"How could you," Venom growled. 

"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Bryce gasped. Coughed.

"They _trusted_ you." Everyone trusted you. You _promised_.

"Who? What? I don't--" Venom cut him off by kicking him onto his back. He stepped on his stomach, hard.

"Ff. _Fuck_." But Bryce kept shaking his head, like he didn't understand.

Liar.

Venom pulled his balaclava and optics off.

"Oh fuck me--" Bryce's eyes widened before he could swallow the words. They were neither of them professionals at this. Their skills lay elsewhere. He was unprepared, and he'd shown his hand, and he _knew_ it, too. His expression steeled a moment later. When Venom dug his heel in further he grunted in pain but all of the feigned weakness and confusion were gone. 

"Start talking." Venom kicked him again. Until he doubled over and started dry-heaving. Rested his boot on his temple instead.

The man said nothing.

"This is going to take all day," Ishmael observed. "Here, let me. You're going to want to gag him."

Venom backed off. Ishmael replaced him, kneeling at Bryce's side. He took Bryce's hand while Venom pinned him. Venom wouldn't enjoy this, but a few broken fingers were the least of what the man deserved. Venom looked away before he heard the crunch; Bryce jerked in his arms and whimpered.

Ishmael watched the man's face the whole time.

His eyes were watering, but he remained defiant. "You'll have to kill me, Snake."

"I doubt that," Ishmael responded confidently and drew his knife. 

Broken fingers would heal. Mutilated ones wouldn't. Venom didn't let his interrogators permanently harm any of their subjects; still, they had all the time in the world. Time was of the essence here. On the scale of sins a few missing fingernails or fingertips were feathers compared to the lead weight of what this man had done.

Ishmael positioned the blade between Bryce's fingers and started sawing his hand apart. 

"No--" Venom began, but it was drowned by the other man's screams. He kicked and spasmed and fought and _nothing_ about this would heal, those tendons were severed forever that muscle was ruined and Ishmael wasn't stopping to let him talk he was _cutting_ his _fingers_ off while Bryce heaved up bile all over Venom's own hand. "Stop. _Stop_!"

Ishmael didn't stop.

Venom grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him away from them. Bryce clutched his hand, sobbing; the damage had already been done.

"What the hell are you _doing_?" Venom hissed. 

Ishmael cocked his head. "What is it, exactly, that you think _Ocelot_ does?"

"Ocelot uses threats. Plays mind games. He causes pain. Never permanent injury." They'd discussed it. Ocelot was a professional; he didn't need to resort to crude tactics like the Russians had with Kaz. They had hammered out exactly what he was and was not allowed to utilize. It was the only way Venom would allow an operation like that to continue. 

"Is that what he told you?" Ishmael chucked affectionately. "He's such a sweet liar."

"That is what he _does_. If he did anything else, Kaz would tell me." There was no love lost between them. Kaz watched Ocelot work all the time. He would happily report any of Ocelot's missteps.

"Would he really? If it was a Red Army prisoner from the same unit that had him drawn and quartered, would he really?"

" _Yes_. I trust him." With everything he had. With his life. With his life's work.

"Just to be clear: this is Kaz we're talking about. The same Kaz who knowingly brought spies onto Mother Base. Who informed on you to Cipher for years. Who stuck his dick into anything that moved as soon as your back was turned. This is the man you trust?"

"Yes," Venom growled, rising to his feet. Bryce collapsed, trying to keep the pieces of his hand together. "We're talking about Kaz. And Ocelot. My oldest friend. Who would never lie to me."

Ishmael shook his head, pityingly. "Kaz is a liar. And a spy. And a fuckboy for everyone who gives him the time of day. And Ocelot... shit, you don't even want to _know_ what Ocelot is, but don't worry, you'll never find out. That would require you to reach inside that sneaking suit and find your balls."

Venom closed the distance between them. It was only a single step, but pressed chest to chest it was apparent that Venom _was_ slightly bigger than him, and he strained for every millimeter of that height to look down at Ishmael. 

"Go on." 

It was an empty threat. Ishmael called him on it. His blood was up and his teeth were gritted - but what was he going to do? Shove him again? Tell him not to talk about his men that way? _Reach inside your sneaking suit and find your balls._

Venom took a swing at him and the next thing he knew he'd kissed the floor so hard he blacked out for a few seconds.

The gray haze of his vision faded back into focus on the broken vial. A-1. 

A-0 was the control.

He'd used A-1 yesterday.

"You _know_ she didn't take her to Kabul," Ishmael said quietly.

Venom got back up. Brushed pieces of glass off his fake uniform. Abandoned his last pretenses. 

The pain he was avoiding was his own. Cowardice. Sheer, utter cowardice. 

"Hold him down. On his stomach," Venom ordered and Ishmael obeyed. "Give me your knife."

Venom straddled Bryce's knees; pulled up his shirt and yanked his shorts down a few inches. "We both know what happens if I cut here." He nicked a thin, bloody line betwen his L4 and L5 vertebrae.

"You never walk again." The knife climbed higher. "But you could still manage your daily life. Still work. Still get off. I cut here--" Venom sliced lightly between the next two bones. "--and you lose sensation below the waist. I sure hope you don't have a girlfriend back home."

He kept going. Pressed the tip in just hard enough that the man beneath him could feel it. Venom could feel him tremble. "Here? All muscle control. You'll wear a diaper for the rest of your life."

"You won't do it," Bryce spat. He'd heard their whole exchange. He didn't know that Venom had realized how pathetic it was to shy away from blood and anguish when this man had 

MURDERED CHILDREN

"You think so? The rest of the XOF I'd just kill, but you - you're special. You took a vow." Venom return the blade to the lowest two vertebra and began to push. Bryce grit his teeth; snarled. Doubting, desperate.

"To what?" Ishmael asked, entirely composed. Watching Venom's face. "To do no harm?"

"A common misconception." Venom forced it all the way in as the man beneath him howled. "But that's never been part of the oath."


	4. Forgiveness

Pain is a useful tool, Ocelot had told him once. Its unpleasantness results in fear, and that fear is what facilitates pain's prowess as a corrective measure. A behaviour modifier. Coupled with reward a rat soon learns which side of the maze to travel, and which to avoid. Soon the shock itself is no longer necessary: the mere association with pain is enough to cause the rat to flee from the familiar direction. It need not be a tunnel; a young child who burns himself while the radio is playing might burst into tears when he hears that same song again. Adults were the same way. An amateur could break bones and sever flesh; a master, an artist, could reduce his subject to a weeping wreck by humming a few notes. 

Or by walking with a rhythm, with a sound, clearly distinguishable from anyone else.

Venom never interrupted Ocelot when he went off on these tangents. It was difficult to tell which were sincere, which were half-truths, and which were - as Ishmael'd succinctly put it - more bullshit than a PhD in post-modern sociology. This one in particular had to belong to one of the latter two, at the least. Ocelot was far too educated not to know, as Venom did, that pain was the most natural thing in the world.

It was helpful, it was kind. It was a warning sign; a signal that precedes injury. Take it away - and there are any number of conditions and chemicals that break that circuit - and one swiftly ends up with bruised, cut, then mangled extremities. They no longer yank fingers back from burning objects, they stride forward barefoot on sharp debris. They hold painful postures for so long they tear joints, muscles. Rats in nature's maze, pain guides men along the path of self-preservation.

No psychological manipulation necessary.

" _Hold him_ ," Venom hissed needlessly; that same instinctive need to escape this agony would be overriding every other in Bryce's mind, and when it didn't stop, information from his other senses would trickle through his damaged nerves along with the raging torrent of ESCAPE ESCAPE ESCAPE, conveying the fact that he was trapped, and could not escape. Not under his own power. Not with the strength he had now. 

These signals did not require conscious processing. They skipped past the committee deliberation of the frontal lobe, the board meeting of facts and figures and sketches, the debate of rational ideas with its library of memories on which to draw. They moved with the speed of electricity, because that is what they were. ESCAPE ESCAPE they signed from the signals room of their HQ; CAN'T ESCAPE was the instantaneous response from the troops in the field. In emergencies like this, the signallers had standing orders: decisions no longer needed to be relayed up the chain of command. They pulled a lever to release the floodgates of an adrenaline bombardment; scorched earth air support DANGER CLOSE friendlies on the ground nearby healing dissolving food all these support processes hijacked, rerouted, commandeered onto the front line, medics and supply techs with rifles in their hands because all hands on deck his heart must BEAT FASTER, blood MUST FLOW to his muscles, which he MUST PUSH past their natural limits because all of these losses are acceptable to prevent catastrophe. To prevent the whole army from being wiped out.

The telltale signs were there: his skin went cold and damp, his pupils constricted. The men they usually fought were a biased, self-selecting sample, but even of those Venom and Ishmael were easily in the ninetieth percentile of strength, and Ishmael had Bryce's arms locked with legs that could lift four times his weight, his torso pinned to the floor, yet between the two of them Bryce almost struggled free. 

Struggles dialed up to panicked thrashing and were Ishmael not wearing leather boots Bryce would have left deep rents in his shins with his fingernails. Those sad secondary natural weapons in a human's arsenal - he wrenched his head to try to use the primary ones, his teeth, but Ishmael shoved his heel into them instead. Thrashing gave way to convulsions - Venom had heard the severing of minor nerves described like a thousand volts of electricity, he couldn't imagine what it felt like when a pair of bolt cutters was taken to the whole damn grid - before Venom wrenched the knife out again. 

A fleeting moment of peace.

Bryce was unconscious; too many signals, too much oxygen in his body and not enough in his brain. Venom sat back on his heels. Wiped his own sweat-slicked face with his forearm. The surreality swallowed by the details: toppled notebooks open to pages of perfectly bland patient histories, a plastic syringe still in its wrapper with milliliters demarcated, black print 'NOT FOR INDIVIDUAL SALE' on the back. The angry hum of a half-open refrigerator door. Sharp annoyance that Ishmael hadn't closed it - but no, that was probably for the best.

"You still with me?" Ishmael sounded concerned; he raised a hand as if to reach for him before thinking better of it. "It's hard to tell if it's him under interrogation, or you."

"Why?" Venom checked quickly - Bryce was breathing, his colour was still good. He wasn't in shock.

"Your face. It was... something else."

Venom shook his head. Glanced down at his hands; they were perfectly still. 

A plaintive moan from beneath Ishmael's feet signalled the end of their respite. " _Fuck_. You are one sadistic, twisted piece of shit, Snake. You brought--"

Ishmael cut him off with a boot to the teeth that left his gums bloody. 

"This is the part where he _talks_ , Sasha," Venom reprimanded Ishmael, who spread his hands innocently. 

"You brought your _surgeon_ all the way out here just so we'd let our guard down." Bryce spat darkly, along with bloody phlegm. "Had him stitch some little kid back together so we'd trust him. Hiding behind your support staff - real American hero, Big Boss."

Venom blinked, at a loss for words before he realized that Bryce had _no idea_ which of them was which. Which one of them had grabbed him. Pulled his mask off. He had them backwards: he thought that Alexei was the man holding him down, the stranger to whom he'd never been introduced the one torturing him. Did they really sound so similar? 

How had Bryce and Colette, two professionals, been fooled by such a flimsy, paper-thin lie? Ocelot made it sound like deception was high art and he a clumsy dabbler, but what did he know? He was the right hand of the GRU, not the left; the sword, the eyes, not the face and voice. He was sure his old friend meant well, but neither of them were spies - they were soldiers.

_We're nothing alike,_ Venom wanted to say. 

" _That_ doesn't sound like 'this is what I'm doing here', 'this is who I'm working for', or 'this is who ordered me to do it'," Ishmael observed helpfully; Venom realized with some chagrin that he hadn't even asked Bryce any questions. Ocelot might be wrong about lying, but he was definitely the superior interrogator.

"You already _know_ ," Bryce snarled, as Venom watched clear spinal fluid ooze from the cut. Hadn't taken long. Didn't look that deep. "You wouldn't be here if you didn't."

With it, he'd broken this man's body for the rest of his life.

"Humour us," Ishmael was saying, as Venom considered all the ways he could fix this. They were sitting _surrounded_ by medical supplies. With a single call he could have surgical experts guiding him every step of the way. If nerve damage was repaired within a few hours there was a possibility he could regain some function. He could have him flown out to Mother Base. Have someone else finish questioning him. Someone who knew what he was doing. Someone who wasn't him. 

Coward.

_You know she didn't take her to Kabul._

It took more pressure to sever the next connection, and Bryce's back was slippery with sweat this time; he could no long kick or buck his hips, so Venom leaned forward and put his body weight into it. He went quickly so that the other man wouldn't lose consciousness, his screams muffled by Ishmael's boot. Against which he sobbed when Venom yanked the knife out again. Venom could _see_ the fight leave him. 

Did that mean he was winning? Was this game _anybody_ won? The acrid stink of urine cut sharply through the dusty desert air; Bryce's nervous system could no longer send signals to those muscles and he'd pissed himself, just as Venom'd promised him he would. _Humiliation is much more effective on the physically resilient than pain is,_ Ocelot had told him once, but with his jaw set and weeping brokenly, Bryce simply looked like a man waiting to die.

He confirmed it: "Go ahead. Keep going." Of course. He knew, the same as Venom did, that any higher and he risked killing him. 

But what else could he do? That was the most devastating yet non-lethal thing he could think of to inflict on man, especially one who so obviously valued physical prowess. Venom's mind didn't go to the same places Ocelot's did. Wouldn't go. Couldn't go. He glanced up at Ishmael, whose eyes were on him, now. He considered asking for help; the image of a single finger raised in reprimand.

_Just once. After this, you have to stand on your own two feet._

Bryce knew that he only had to wait, that Venom's present course of action was untenable for more than a few more cuts. Knowledge was strength. _Don't fight your enemy's strengths_ , his mentor had taught him, merciless: _fight his weaknesses_. How would he do that? He didn't know this man's weaknesses; if anything, they were his own. He'd bestowed that particular piece of wisdom on Ocelot once, who'd answered, smiling with his eyes: _a man's strengths are his greatest weaknesses_ , as if battlefield tactics were a Greek tragedy. As if knowledge could ever be weakness, and ignorance strength.

As if knowledge could ever reduce him to tears at the bedside of the man he loved, _knowing_ exactly what had been done to him and how it had _felt_.

Venom rose to his feet. Ishmael's watchful, interested gaze on him as he picked through the drugs they had stocked for the word he wanted. Atenolol. "You know how to set an IV?" Venom asked him, and he nodded, catching the bag and line Venom tossed out of the air. "Sure. Been a while, but I get the impression you won't write me up for missing the vein the first time."

A bottle of oxygen and a mask followed. Ishmael's lips quirked skeptically, but he screwed the latter into the former and strapped to Bryce's face all the same. "Can I ask you how this is going to hurt him, exactly?"

Venom didn't blame the man for doubting him - a few minutes ago he'd been on the verge of stitching Bryce back up. "It won't. It'll keep him from losing consciousness or going into cardiac arrest."

He scavenged up a handful of auxilliary supplies: clamps, gauze, antiseptic, gloves. None of them necessary, but all of them nice to have. He wondered if it had ever crossed the minds of those men who'd given him the idea, those few men he could admit he hated, that their victim could have bloodborne illnesses that would drag them right down to the grave with him when they touched his open wounds. Venom was fairly sure Bryce didn't, but Kaz - how could they possibly have known?

He set them down beside Bryce and grabbed the man's hips. "We're going to turn him onto his back. Carefully." Ishmael had the difficult part, but he didn't seem to mind. Bryce wriggled his good arm free just far enough to claw for Ishmael's face; Ishmael caught it before he reached his eyes and broke it at the wrist.

"That's 'carefully', to you," Venom chided after Bryce had finished screaming. 

"I told you I don't do the nurse thing," was all Ishmael could offer in his defense, peering down at the thin trickle of blood oozing down from the corner of Bryce's lips. "Should I be making sure he doesn't bite his tongue off?"

"No." Venom cut through Bryce's sweat-soaked shirt with the knife. Cleaned it and his chest, arm, and shoulder with the isopropanol; Bryce was far past flinching over something as simple as the sting of alcohol on his skin. Venom could see the whites of his eyes. See his jaw muscles straining in fear. "You can't actually bleed out that way. He knows that."

Someone had been here. Right here. Above Kaz. Watched terrified tears slip out from under his pale lashes, a _grown man_ , and _kept going_.

Gloves first. 

It was easier than he thought it would be to make the cut he wanted just below the clavicle; Ishmael kept his knives sharp. The ~~subclavian~~ artery he wanted was under bone and muscle, but large enough to dig out with his fingers after he'd made a window. He clamped it, first. He'd sew this one up; if the clamp slipped off while they worked Bryce would be dead in minutes. Seconds. "Clean your hands. I need you to hold things."

Ishmael did as asked, sloppily. Fascinated.

_Why are you always so disgusting? You wouldn't have to visit me half as often if you'd just wash your hands and cook everything you--_ "Under your nails, too."

"Sure thing, doc." 

This shouldn't feel familiar. Comfortable. It should be agonizing. But Venom knew exactly what it would feel like to sever an artery before he did it, and how much pressure he'd have to put on it before Ishmael handed him the clamp to keep too much blood from pooling around his fingers. Not to be alarmed by the backflow from the opposite end that filled it, dripped from the cavity and down Bryce's chest as he made the ligature; tightly, neatly. He passed his tools back to Ishmael, who laid them on a freshly unwrapped piece of gauze.

"No." Bryce's voice was barely audible. "No, _don't_."

Venom waited expectantly. Wanted so very badly for him to talk. While most of this could still be undone.

Or did he?

"We're going to dislocate his arm at the--" ~~genohumeral joint~~ "--shoulder." By we, Venom meant Ishmael, and Ishmael understood: CQC was always easier on the immobile and, after a sharp frown from Venom, he even used his clean hand instead of his boot to brace while he twisted Bryce's arm until it popped out its socket.

"Last chance." Venom pronounced with the most absolute finality he could muster through teeth gritted against tears.

"I told you," Bryce spat desperately, "You'll have to kill me."

"This won't kill you," Venom promised.

No, the man who'd taken his arm had known what he was doing. Sawed cleanly through the cartilage and left the muscle intact. Known that it would have to be careful and quick for Kaz to survive it. Venom'd run his fingers over the smooth surface of Kaz's blunt shoulder while the other man slept; right under the ~~acromion process~~ the bone. Neat. Easy. No surgical tools necessary. Could do it would just about anything.

A combat knife, for example.

He swallowed, milling restlessly on the edge of a precipice, until Ishmael's hands closed over his own. Urged him downward with gentle weight.

Venom started cutting. From the ~~axilla~~ armpit upward. The serrated edges of the blade ripped through skin and hair and subcutaneous fat - not that Bryce had much - like bread; he had to add weight, pressure when he hit the brachial nerves, and that was when Bryce began to thrash and shriek again, but this time there would be no overloading, short-circuiting of that signal. No adrenaline spike. No hyperventilation. Just pain.

"No no nononono stop stop stop _stop_!" The words blurred into one long, hysterical scream and Venom thought he heard gunfire before the sheer volume of Bryce's voice drowned it out. His ears rang and crackled with it. He kept cutting.

From the way Kaz reached for his stump, while he thrashed in his own dreams, right for the nerve, Venom knew he'd been conscious the whole time, too.

He pulled them taught around the knife and they snapped. Minor veins and arterial branches still pumping blood he clamped, and there was enough of it to soak his hands and pool on the floor at his knees before he ripped through the last of the cartilage; the last few threads of skin simply tore. 

Venom dropped the knife and sagged forward; Ishmael caught him by the shoulders, pulling his head into the crook of his neck. His other hand still laid atop Venom's blood-soaked glove. Until the sobs died down.

How could they do that to him? How could anyone do that to someone?

"Sssh," Ishmael murmured.

"What _fuck_ is wrong with you?" Bryce's pupils had all but disappeared; his eyes were blue and white, agony and dread. He was shivering uncontrollably with both. 

"I'd need a bone saw. For the leg." Venom swallowed. Gazed flicked down to just below Bryce's knee. But not _at_ it, and that made all the difference.

Whoever'd taken Kaz's leg, in contrast, hadn't known what he was doing. He'd been a butcher: he'd cut through muscle and two major bones, and the cut slanted inward at the ~~tibia~~ shin, the opposite of how it should have been, leaving severed muscles dangling, disconnected, from the knee in raw bloody ribbons hacked through unevenly like a machete to jungle foliage and he'd been _days_ in surgery to fix it, when if he'd just _cut through the knee_ it would have been clean. Simple. Easily healed. They'd left _Kaz_ \- his _Kaz_ \- in _pieces_ to writhe. And rot. And live in pain for the rest of his life.

If he ever met the man who'd done it he would take Ishmael's blow torch to his eyes. Melt them right in their sockets and rip the optical nerve out with his _fingers_. Cover him in third degree burns and _throw him into the ocean_.

"He wouldn't feel it right now, anyway," Venom continued, his own voice very distant. Ishmael's arm around him very tight. "We could use the other arm. Below the--" 

Radioulnar joint.

_No, I know that word. You can't take that word away from me. It's just a name. Names won't trigger the parasites. Names aren't specific to any language. Any language can use them. They're not even English names - they're Latin. Greek. Languages aren't parasites, anyhow: they're viruses. They swap genes and mutate, becoming alike and unlike. Skull Face's plan was insane. It was global genocide. The DNA of English languishes in so many other languages now that the vocal chord parasite for English would be a death sentence for anyone on the planet who practiced science. Business. Aviation. Engineering._

MEDICINE.

"--elbow." 

"What the--" Bryce was gasping, wild-eyed and shrinking backwards, as if he were staring down a madman. Ishmael's own lips were parted, as if he wanted to echo those words. Or say something he couldn't bring himself to say. "What the _fuck_. What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?!"

"Nothing." Venom straightened, looming over them both. "I was wondering which piece of you I should cut off next. Or should I reattach your arm? I could do it."

He seized Bryce's jaw. Fingers slippery with blood, sweat, tears, mucous, and latex. "You _know_ I could do it. I could take your organs--"

_She's missing her ovaries, her uterus, and one of her kidneys. Organs she can survive without. They removed them to make room for the bomb._

"--and I could put them back again." _You know I could. You know all the things I could do._ Ocelot's Greek tragedy. Venom felt Ishmael tremble against his side; no, he must have imagined that. Ishmael would never do that. "And you won't miss a minute of it. I'll bring you back to my base, where my surgeons will keep you alive for _years_. I'll use you to train them. Much more realistic than a doll or a corpse, wouldn't you say? I'll set aside a whole budget for it."

"You wouldn't." Now Bryce, Bryce most definitely trembled.

"You were wrong about that the last time. Do you want to be wrong again? There is _nothing_ I won't do to you." To a man who broke his oath and abused his position. To a _child killer_.

Bryce believed him. The moment he believed him, he broke. He wasn't fighting; he wasn't even waiting to die. His brows drew together and he shrank down against Ishmael's shins with such a pitiful, pathetic, beaten expression Venom knew he'd shoot his own mother if that was what Venom asked of him. "Talk," was all he needed to say.

"Y-you know I work for Cipher," spilled out of his mouth with tears. 

"I--" Venom began.

"Not good enough." Ishmael cut him off. "XOF, or the real thing?"

XOF was responsible for Cipher's black operations, so far as Venom knew. Unless Ishmael meant Zero? Or simply higher up the chain of command? He knew he was missing something, something very important, but what he knew in one part of his mind was a ship grinding against what he _knew_ with the rest of it, the iceberg against which new ideas always sank.

"You think _I_ work for fucking CIA? You think that rabid lunatic is capable of this kind of subtlety?" 

_Was capable,_ Venom almost said, but he was the threat and Ishmael was the mouthpiece, now. Was that how it should be?

"You work for _her_ , then." Ishmael seemed satisfied when Bryce nodded. "On what?"

"Viruses. That target specific genes." He seemed less than satisfied with that one, though, and when Venom raised the knife above his abdomen Bryce _shrieked_ in terror. "No-no-no NO! No, that's - I know that's old shit. USAMRIID developed those ages ago to target ethnic groups. But these select for an entire genome. We've got it down to _families_ , now. We can kill parents and their children, siblings, and leave second cousins completely untouched. Eventually, we'll be able to target a single _person_. Completely untraceable. Anybody could be a carrier, and no one would know."

Venom exhaled through his teeth. So, Cipher wanted to eliminate the double-edged nature of biological warfare. The reality that any disease unleashed on an enemy could just as readily turn on one's own troops; that any cure for it would soon pass into their hands as well. It would make for one hell of a deterrent, but he had no faith that they wouldn't use it. No, he had faith that they _would_.

"You sure as hell weren't sequencing genomes here in this trailer," Ishmael observed, pointing out the obvious. "Where's your HQ?" 

"Our laboratory, you mean? Back in the US. Atlanta." Bryce bit his lip; the kind of tell even Venom could read.

"Bullshit." Venom caught Ishmael's hand before he could strike him, and continued: "You're packing live virus in ice and you _drive_ out of here. You're not getting samples from Atlanta."

No, they would be running this operation in Afghanistan for the same reason XOF had done their research in Africa: to take advantage of the instability and chaos to slip under the radar of international observers. It wasn't that no lawful government would countenance human experimentation - lawful governments had, and worse - but rather, the veil of deniability war provided. How easily atrocities could be laid to rest at the feet of the Soviets.

"There's a fortress five miles to the northeast of Srah Kandah, on the Pakistani border. All of our support comes through there. Beyond that, I don't know," Bryce admitted, and cringed when Venom settled back on his heels. "I _don't_. A dirt road leads right to it from the river valley. The watchtower has a blue roof. You can't miss it."

Venom had no way of telling whether this was good intel or a convincingly told lie, but from the way Ishmael tilted his head, and nodded, he seemed satisfied with it. A bloody finger pressed to Ishmael's lips stilled the desire to question. Instead he waited Jaguar to confirm that location - for directions, and satellite footage. He didn't know what else to ask. What else to say. Except: "Why?"

"Are you sure you really want to know?" Ishmael asked quietly. Venom nodded.

Bryce's wide eyes flicked between the two of them; his lips twitched upwards in an ugly grin. "Never thought I'd get the chance to tell Big Boss to go fuck himself in person. Fine: I'll tell you a story. So, when I was working with the Red Cross in Ethiopia we had what we called lost causes. Kids under five who'd lost thirty, fourty percent of their body weight, who weren't going to make it no matter what we did. It sounds inhuman, I know, but when you've got tens of thousands of people starving to death and limited supplies, you can't afford to waste much. Just make them comfortable, offer their parents - if they have any - some reassuring words and move on."

It didn't sound inhuman to Venom at all. It sounded like triage. Those words, that promise, had been amended a long time ago so that healers could offer death to the suffering. "But hey, I was young, and stupid. When one of them came to me and could speak a couple words of English - just four years old, probably - recognized my Dodgers hat asked me if I played for them, hah, fuck me. I couldn't help myself. Poor little guy's pretty bad: brittle bones, swollen stomach, a laundry list of opportunistic infections. I started giving him my own food. Swiped antibiotics from docs who knew better. If I could save _just one_ kid, maybe the rest I'd had to let die would forgive me. Maybe there was some point in me being there aside from patronizing Western pity."

_And he died anyway, along with someone else those supplies could have saved_ , Venom expected to hear, but Bryce continued: "Oh, no, he made it. It took months and daily care, but he made it. He was running around, playing, by the time I left. Promised me he'd come to America someday and I told him I'd take him to a ball game. Gave him my hat. We moved on to other camps. I watched more kids die. It was okay, though, I told myself. I helped some. I saved some. When we rotated back the area was occupied by the ELF. Fine - I was used to treating soldiers. Right? I can pretend to bond with assholes who steal shit from starving kids and fuck little girls when I really need to. Until..."

His voice cracked; he laughed. "...Until one of them comes in wearing my fucking _hat_. I asked him where he got it, and - hahahah. Fuck. Whoops. That shot of streptomycin might've been phenol. Should've been more careful. It was so easy - you don't even know. I think my body count was higher than half the insurgents before I got done. When the men in black showed up after I got back stateside I thought I was getting the death penalty - but no, I got a _job offer_. Fuck them. And fuck you. You're a scavenger feeding off human misery for profit, elevating you and your little band of killers' bloodlust into something _heroic_. Nobody _fights_ for _peace_ , dipshit. Bullets kill more people than scaaaary fucking nukes ever have, ever will. But hey, people with money are afraid of nukes. So you go pocket their lucrative fears and kidnap the choicest murderers while your rejects butcher people with the misfortune of living in the wrong impoverished country."

Venom simply shook his head. He'd stared into the same abyss this man had. He didn't know when, but he could remember the helplessness, the futility of railing against those specters. War, famine, disease. He'd been mistaken - Bryce broke a long time ago. "I don't kill unless I have to." Nuclear disarmament wasn't for himself, or his benefactors: it was for future, innocent generations. Fallout would scar them in a way that spent casings wouldn't. "Look at yourself. Look at what _you've_ done."

"What have I done? Everyone in this village is fucked, Snake. Have you seen what the commies did to captured villages up north? Raped the women, shot the kids, then shot the women, too. Then they shelled them. So that nobody could come back and use the buildings. Oh, and if our government-backed religious fanatics happen to win, exactly what is it you think _they'll_ do to women who slept with the enemy? The bastard kids of Russians? Have you ever treated whole body acid burns? A thirteen-year-old girl raped by her own uncle and stoned for it, with broken ribs and crushed organs because none of them hit her head? I have."

Those bottomless depths were below him once more, in Bryce's slowly widening pupils. "There is no future here. And there's nothing you or I can do about it. But when Cipher is finished, the world will be one. And when the world is one there will be no nations, no religions, no ethnic groups: no wars. No soldiers. Butchers like you will be condemned to the trash heap of history, where you belong. And that's why you want to stop us: we'll call you what you really are. _And have been all along_. Dogs, not men. Dogs who'd pick up a gun and kill when they could've fed the hungry, housed the homeless, healed the sick."

Ishmael opened his mouth to speak; Venom cut him off with a soft snort. "You're right." He cleaned the knife and handed it back to Ishmael. "We are dogs. We guard men against the wolves who'd poison them for a higher cause. Who'd take away their past, their choices, and call it freedom. And yes, we need guns to do it."

"You--"

"--As fascinating this playground posturing is, he and I've got places to be." Ishmael tapped the tip of blade against Bryce's neck. "Great story, though. I'll tell that one to my kids. What'll it be, Lyosha? You going to take him or leave him? Bet he's got more where that came from." 

Bryce tensed violently; Venom shook his head. "I'm a man of my word." 

Bryce didn't even time to relax before Ishmael twisted his knees sharply to the side, snapping his neck between them.

Alone with Ishmael and a silent, staring corpse, Venom released the breath he'd been holding. Sat back on his heels. Stripped his gloves off and laid his damp face in his hands. It served a dual purpose - he didn't have to look at the mess he'd made.

"Guess I don't have to ask where you got that idea." He heard Ishmael shift backward and drop the dead man's head to the floor, though not move to stand.

"I'll never be enough for him, will I," Venom asked quietly, "To replace everything he's lost."

Ishmael mulled that over before answering, "No. Probably not." The leather of his boots and gloves creaked as he leaned forward. "Hey..."

"Boss." Jaguar's voice buzzed in his ear. "We have coordinates for that fortress. I'm sending the details to your iDroid."

Venom scrubbed his eyes and nose with his sleeve, then beckoned for Ishmael, who scooted carefully around blood, piss, and a severed arm to his side. He displayed the image for both of them: a dot on a live map of Afghanistan, grainy satellite images of a walled compound in the mountains. Too far away to make out any details aside from the fact that it had defensive armaments and there were vehicles parked outside. Signs of life, in this time and place. To distinguish it from another crumbling monument to past conquests.

"How did we miss this?" Venom wondered. A question to himself as much as his intel team.

"Because it's outside your sandbox." Ishmael zoomed in on the map. " _Way_ outside."

He was right. Deep in the southeast of Khost, days out of Kabul. They'd been walking in the right direction but it would still be many hours to drive there--

Venom straightened in the same instant Ishmael did. Quick mental calculations going through both of their minds: the maximum safe speed of a truck on a winding dirt road versus the top ground speed of a Blackfoot. Where they would meet if they left immediately.

It would be close.

"We might be able save--"

"We might be able to get there before she does," Ishmael spoke over him, excitedly. "Take them unaware."

_So, are you CIA, or...?_

She knew he wasn't fucking CIA. Cipher, XOF, _worked_ with the CIA. And Venom, master of deception that he was, had let slip that they were infiltrators. Ishmael had disguised his voice but Venom hadn't, and even if Colette herself wouldn't recognize Big Boss's speech in person, they definitely had audio files of it. How many other Americans were there in Afghanistan right now? Stupid.

"Next time you need a spy, Ishmael, let me know ahead of time and I'll lend you a real one," Venom offered apologetically.

"Oh, I think you did pretty well." Ishmael grinned. "How many birds you got in the air?"

Venom thumbed the button to check. "Three. I was going to send the other two back to Mother Base. I'm sure they could use the support." It was his fault they were all out here, searching, in the first place. With the command platform impassable they needed those helos to get from one place to another.

"For what? Aerial photography? Take them all with us. I know the woman in charge and she doesn't take chances - that lab'll be well-defended. We might need a little shock and awe."

"Surprise and enthusiasm," were what won most battles, and from what Venom had observed of Ishmael so far, he embodied the principle.

"Now you're getting it." Ishmael eased himself to his feet and offered his arm to Venom. "Let's go blow some shit up. But first, let's go steal a truck."

Venom clasped it. "Reroute all three helos to the location I'm sending you," he told Jaguar. "Pequod will pick up me, Quiet, and Ishmael there."

"Ishmael?"

"My old first mate." Before the fiery wreckage of their ship had sunk to the bottom the sea.

Ishmael gave him a thumbs up.

"Uh... if you say so, Boss. Good luck."

"Come on, captain." Ishmael wrenched the trailer door open, and froze.

Venom peered around him; his grip tightened on Ishmael's shoulder. More corpses. Some of them barely recognizable as such, which spoke to Quiet's handiwork with the weapon Ishmael'd given her. Raw, tattered pieces of what had been people with patchwork equipment strewn through the space between the tent and trailer. From what had been positions of cover in the nearby village and were now blasted rubble.

The Mujahideen must have heard Bryce's screams. Had thought him to be what he pretended to be, and Venom and Ishmael the Russian spetsnaz they pretended to be. His savage, religious fanatics come to his defense, nobly. The streets were deserted. But there were other bodies, too: one of the Soviets. When Ishmael stepped down into the dirt, several of those soldiers called to him. Venom hurriedly replaced his balaclava.

"Do you need language support?" Jaguar inquired. "I have your Russian interpreter tasked to something else right now but I could give it a shot."

"No, that's fine." The Soviets believed they were their brothers-in-arms. That was enough. All Venom needed to know was that after a single night of drinking with them, they'd been willing to risk their lives to defend them.

Ishmael answered them. Gestured back inside the trailer. The Soviets had barred the MSF from the territory they controlled, ostensibly because they believed them to be full of Western eyes and ears. CIA plants. Not so far from the truth, in this case.

"Your narrator thinks fast on his feet." Jaguar observed.

"Narrator? Oh." Right, Ishmael. "Leave the running commentary to Ocelot, Jaguar."

"Sure thing, Boss."

They didn't even have to steal that truck. The Soviets offered one up of their own volition; Ishmael borrowed an AK and a few magazines for Venom, the keys, and after a brief pause, the Lee-Enfield from a dead Mujahideen fighter. "A thank you card," he replied to Venom's sidelong glance, before snagging the driver's seat. "Quiet not coming with us?" He asked as Venom slid into shotgun, the revving engine a cover for their English. "We could put her in the back and turn this thing into a technical."

"Believe it or not, she's faster than a ground vehicle." Which made her ideal for scouting ahead. And for covering them.

"But not faster than a helicopter," Ishmael mused, as Venom checked and cleared the weapon, aiming out the window. Then readied it and locked the lever to safe. "You know, I'm not anticipating much resistance on the road to Khost." They were headed south, away from the fighting.

Ah. "Jaguar, change the RV point for Astrea. She'll be picking up Quiet. She's to drop her off outside visual range of our objective, then regroup with Pequod and Titan. Quiet, recce the area for us."

Quiet's hum was displeased. "I know." Venom said softly, to assuage her concern. "But I need your eyes. Ishmael'll watch my back."

Quiet _hmphed_ , but he saw the dust trails of her passage kicked up by the wind along the road ahead of them until she pulled so far ahead that they settled before the vehicle reached them.

"It's the little things that still give you away." Venom could hear Ishmael's smile. Feel his gaze from the corners of his eyes while he drove, one-handed.

Whatever that was supposed to mean. "You don't like my battle plan?"

"It could use some work. For example, we could have saved a few precious minutes if you hadn't insisted on listening to Nurse Rachet's sob story," Venom was about to object, but Ishmael cut him off. "No, look, I get it. I used to be the same way. If you're going to kill 'em, the least you can do is hear them out, right? But it's always blah blah future of the world blah blah nukes blah blah globalization sucks blah blah giant robots. Same shit, different dickhead." Venom refrained from pointing out that Ishmael seemed perfectly enamoured of his own voice, all the same. "Next time you want to debate philosophy, save yourself the trouble and ask Ocelot. He'll be delighted."

Sage advice, save for when the alternative was deeply awkward silence. Venom remained in the debt of that XOF driver and his quick-thinking decision to turn on the radio. Speaking of which - Venom reached for the dial. Local weather and Russian propaganda would be preferable to drifting off. Ishmael batted his hand away; left the red imprint of mostly-dried, crusted blood from his palm. "Oh I see, I'm boring, too. How long have you been up? At least twenty-hour hours, right? We've got hours before we link up with the helos - get some shut eye. We'll take turns."

A dangerous proposition in theory, but Venom knew from experience that even ten minutes of sleep would make him more alert. Steadier. Lift some of the fog from his mind. "Don't let me sleep the whole time."

"I won't," Ishmael responded, and Venom had no idea whether he was lying or not.

He laid his head to rest against the window and was out in seconds.

_And back in Colombia. Windows misted with tepid, steamy rain. Greens muted with grey twilight. Rough canvas against his skin. The quiet creak of a door._

_"Sorry, sir." Mumbled. "I'll move."_

_"If there's one bed, the doc gets it." The rasp of a lighter. The sweet smell of smoke._

_"Bullshit. The CO gets it." Cool floorboards. Eyes tight and crusted with sleep._

_Footsteps. Heavy, silent, certain. "Guess we'll have to share."_

_The rustle of cloth. The creak and tilt and warmth of added weight. Pulling skin to skin, limb to limb, naturally, like gravity. "Sorry to wake you." Unexpected sincerity._

_"You didn't." Relief. Tension. Certainty that traveled from the calloused fingers pressed to his chest down to his toes._

_"No? Looked like you were having a nightmare." Soothing. A tone for a wild animal meant to be tamed; a captive with a knife to his throat. "Don't worry - I get 'em, too."_

_"Sleep paralysis." The customary explanation is automatic: "When the mind regains consciousness before control over the body for a few seconds. Minutes."_

_"Believe it or not, I know what sleep paralysis is." Amused. "People used to think they were being possessed by ghosts."_

_"Demons, actually." Bemused. Grateful but equally trapped. "Succubi and incubi."_

_"Those are the hot ones, right? Doesn't sound so bad." Warm, fragrant breath on his neck. The soft scrape of facial hair; softer still, leg hair against his thigh. "Sign me up."_

_"For which? The succubus or the incubus?" A smile._

_"I could do either."_

_Yes, this was really happening._

"Hey. Hey. Come back to me. C'mere." Calloused fingertips on his shoulder. Heat pressed into his side. "He's not here. You'll wake up. I promise."

_Stall. Stall, not because they shouldn't - and they shouldn't - but because there's something he needs first. Something that makes it all fair._

_"I don't see demons, or ghosts." That weight, heavier. That warmth, hotter. That hand, lower. That eye, more expressive, even in half-light._

_"Oh? What do you see?" Those lips, on his throat._

_"My brother."_

No. Yes? _No_ , he doesn't have a brother. Never had one. Ishmael must have one - that's not him, anyway, that's not what he looks like, that's _her_ , her and her high, cutting cheekbones and her blue-grey eyes

Pale, pitiless eyes

Suffocating him, crushing him under her weight. He can't breathe. His body won't obey him. Drowning is the worst death he can imagine and when the mangled steel hands rise to drag them both down into darkness, he begs God not to let them die this way. He hasn't prayed in years. But God is mercy, and He listens, and he passes Ishmael up into the arms of His angel, satisfied.

He never expected the angel to come back for him, too.

Venom shuddered awake, gasping. Pressed into Ishmael's side. Flexed his fingers to force them to move. To quell the rising panic that he was once again trapped under the demon with bloody hands; the one who haunted his nightmares. 

"You still get these, huh? Rough." Ishmael rubbed Venom's hand, warming it up for him. The sun had risen high enough in the sky to beat down on them directly; Ishmael blinked blearily through the brightness. "It's okay. I've got you." 

They must be near the RV point. Venom frowned. "Why didn't you wake me up?" 

"I _tried_. And look where it got me." The rattle of the poorly seated windows and the wheezing engine should have kept him awake as painfully as the dust and diesel fumes, yet, they threatened to pull him under again. "I'm fine. Twenty-four hours is nothing. I'm not seeing shit yet."

Neither was Venom. His mind was clear. "You were there that night. On the helicopter."

"Fuck." 

That was not the reaction Venom was expecting. He wasn't sure what reaction he _was_ expecting, but that was not it.

"He's going to fucking kill me," Ishmael muttered, his hands tensed on the steering wheel.

"I'm sorry, I don't remember your name," Venom admitted, at last. "I don't remember your face, either."

But he'd been there. There'd been one of his men, one who'd come on board with Kaz, face covered with a balaclava. Someone who wasn't the Kaz, or Chico, or Morpho, or the medic. In the chaos of the crash they'd wound up together, arms around one another, and he'd passed him up to Kaz. The only one who still had the strength enough, a body intact enough, to swim. "Kaz saved us both." 

"You were _conscious_?" Ishmael was incredulous. "With that in your head?"

"For a little while." Venom nodded. "You weren't. But you got lucky enough to sink with the Boss. Kaz came back for us. He took you, then me."

"Hm." The tension in Ishmael's posture evaporated. "Guess so. Doesn't bother you that he took me first?"

Why would it? It was triage. "You were unconscious. Breathing in water. I still had control over that - and injuries that looked fatal. Of course he took you first."

"Damn. I think I'm definitely more sentimental than you are." He could hear Ishmael's grin again. He pointed across the horizon, to a tiny black speck soaring in at a diagonal, on course to collide with theirs. "That's your ship, Ahab." 

Venom's radio crackled: "This is Pequod. Arriving shortly at LZ." 

"It's good to hear your voice, Pequod," Venom confessed. Turned on his iDroid to pick the best spot. Not too soft - he didn't want his best pilot landing in a brownout. 

"You too, Boss!" 

_She said, 'Baby, I got a license for love  
And if it expires pray help from above'_

Ishmael skidded them to a stop on the still-damp bed of a salt creek. They collected what little kit they had hopped aboard as soon as Pequod slowed to a hover. Waste of a perfectly good truck to ditch it in the middle of the desert, but if abandoning vehicles was a sin, Venom was already damned to the lowest level of hell. 

He tugged the balaclava off as soon as the doors were shut and scratched his itching scalp. Noticed that Ishmael hadn't. "Welcome to my office. Make yourself comfortable. Normally my secretary'd be here to give you a backrub but she's off to do the dangerous part of the mission for us."

"Hey, rain check on that backrub," Ishmael took the spot opposite Quiet's, and for a truly unreal instant Venom imagined him stretching languidly across it like she did. Instead, he laid flat with his hands behind his head, facing Venom. He'd cast his voice down an octave, like he had back the village. Venom didn't blame him - the resemblance really was uncanny. He wondered if he'd ever pranked the men of the MSF by issuing 'commands' on the radio. Probably. "And it's ladies' first, Lyosha. Especially when it comes to recon."

"Boss, can I get a backrub from Quiet?" Pequod didn't seem bothered by their new guest in the slightest.

"You'd crash," Ishmael told him. "Hell, _I'd_ crash."

The calming familiarity of the ACC burned off the last of the haze; he was no longer a stranger in strange land, he was home. Ishmael was an old friend, a brother who'd bled with him, one he'd finally put a face to - more or less. He wouldn't mind if he stripped out of his stolen fatigues and back into his sneaking suit. Venom wouldn't mind if he watched. "You going to be all right in that?" He might have something that would fit him. 

"My friend, I've done missions _naked_." 

"Can is not the same as should." 

"If it's good enough for the godless communists, it's good enough for me."

"Poorly fitted boots will leave you limping for days."

"But then I get my feet wrapped by the cute doctor. Where's the disincentive in that?"

Venom kicked the seat; Ishmael snickered. "Go to sleep. I slept in the truck." 

"You should, too," Ishmael yawned and threw an arm over his face. "We've got time to kill. When in doubt, rack out."

One nightmare was more than enough for Venom - he'd save the sleep for home. When he could do it with DD's chin on his ankles, on his own bed, wrapped comfortably around his second-in-command. 

_Kaz._

The return of that gnawing worry in the pit of his stomach was more than equal to the task of maintaining his wakefulness. He tapped the corner of his display screen - two sniper-spotter fire teams were in position. _Take shots of opportunity._ Charges were set to cut the power. His best personnel had been pulled back from Africa; the assault team was going over breaching drills as he watched. The medical team setting up a decontamination line for them. _Do it simultaneously_ , he thought, _if you see a target, signal the dive team._

But Armadillo, the combat OC, had already given that command.

He smiled.

"You're a lot more talkative around him, eh Boss?" Pequod observed quietly, while Ishmael snored.

"He's an old friend." _'Target acquired.'_

_'Do it.'_

"I'm glad you still have those."

_CRACK._

_BOOM. SCREECH._

"So am I."

_'That... is a confirmed kill, Boss.'_

_'I see a lot of activity from the signals room. Standby.'_

"Any friend of yours is a friend of ours."

_'Sir? Pretty sure I just caught a glimpse of the Commander in the stairwell.'_

_'Confirm it. We need to know if they're holding them below decks.'_

"He was part of the MSF, back in the day."

_Scratch. Static._

_'This is...' Click._

"And you didn't Fulton him? He's getting the Cadillac service back to Mother Base, huh?"

_Rustle. 'This is Commander Miller. Ocelot and I are alive. They plan to extract via their own helicopter.'_

"I'm not taking him back with us. He's a free bird."

_'And if they don't hand us back alive at that point_ kill them all.'

Kaz couldn't hear Armadillo's 'fuck yeah, sir' or Jaguar's 'с удовольствием' - the latter some of the small smattering of Russian Venom could understand. 'My pleasure'. He couldn't hear, when Ishmael stirred awake at Venom's inhalation of dismay at how weak, how utterly drained Kaz's voice was, his affectionate chuckle: "Sounds like him." Nor his "Give 'em hell, Kaz," fondly.

It had only been thirty some-odd hours. Kaz didn't sound like that because he'd missed a night of a sleep.

Ishmael caught his expression. "He'll be fine."

"They're torturing him," Venom stated flatly. Did not say _them_ , because if that wasn't the case, Ocelot was dead. "I thought you said they would be their exfiltration plan."

"He's survived under torture for weeks, before." For the second time, Ishmael's nonchalance made him grit his teeth. He wouldn't rise to it this time, though. They'd settled that already. "It's barely been a day."

"A lot can happen to a man in a day. An hour." Venom aimed a finger at Ishmael, and cocked it with his thumb. "A second."

"Hm." Ishmael didn't argue the point. Instead, he asked, softly: "What, exactly, do you think they're doing to do to him that hasn't been done already?"

 

 

"Boss?" The medic's tone had been sympathetic. Grave. A face - albeit older now - he did remember. "I know you won't want to hear this, but I'm advising you to refrain from exchanging any sexual fluids with Commander Miller until we have his bloodwork back."

Venom's jaw had tightened. The medic meant well, as unnecessary as it had been to say aloud. "I won't."

"I wouldn't recommend..." She'd faltered, clearly weighing her words. "Not even with protection. He needs time to heal. Two or three weeks, at least."

Ah. So only a partial prolapse, then.

"You shouldn't be telling me this. Kaz's medical records are his own business." And how much, or how little he chose to divulge to Venom was his own business, too. As was when he was ready to resume their relationship.

"Yes, of course, but - you and he, you know, back then you didn't always..."

 

_"Oh come on, Boss, they can cure that with a shot these days!"_

_You know, for once, I'm not going to flinch when he hits you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter went waaaay too long, so I'm splitting it up into two parts (like I should have for PoD *cough*). I'm they're both finished, but d_l_m has made me promise not to post the latter half until she's finished her JLPT under threat of (her) demise.
> 
> Fine, bb you can't die yet I still need you to sip sweet tea and defeat Cipher.
> 
> Next one'll be up shortly, is what I'm saying.


	5. Solidarity

Venom didn't have a good answer for that. The obvious one - 'kill him' - seemed paltry. Insufficient. There was so much worse than death in this world. Kaz's death would hurt Venom, hurt the Diamond Dogs, not himself.

That was why they'd changed the oath, so that healers could end suffering.

Quiet's low whistle in his ear snapped him out of his brood. She knew better than to make noise, but when he switched to the live map on his iDroid he couldn't hold it against her.

The fortress was lit up like a Christmas tree there were so many markers. It rivalled, if not surpassed, OKB Zero. Not nearly so many troops or as much armour but the generous serving of anti-air radar paired with surface-to-air missiles made for a full course of clusterfuck. A suicide run for his helicopters.

"Well, that's going to be hairy," Ishmael remarked beside him, his boots up on the aluminum seat frame.

"It's going to be impossible." Venom deflated. "How did we miss this? How are there still so many of them operating here? We broke them when we took Sahelanthropus."

"'Them'? These guys are Cipher, but they're not XOF. Cipher is a globe-spanning circle-jerk of Big Brother wannabes, my friend, and that chain gets longer every day. I doubt she's even met Skull Face." Ishmael rotated the map. Looked for weak points: angles of approach from which they would have the best chance of success. "She sure doesn't want us interrupting this particular handjob, though."

"'She'?" Colette? Maybe, if they flanked them, skirted the border and came in from the southeast, and Quiet took out the radar... No, she had no subtle means of doing so. That would put them on high alert.

"What? Women can be bitches with the best of us." Ishmael considered, then dismissed, the same course of action. Seemed to be considering how many SAM sites Quiet could disable before they blew her to hell and back with mortars. Not enough. Not nearly enough. "Cipher's full of cunts. This one happens to have one."

"You sound like you know her." No, not Colette. Ishmael hadn't reacted when he'd seen her at all.

"You do, too. This whole mess started when you took the two hot ones with you and left Zero with the nerds. He's never really gotten over it." No, it was time to abandon the idea of a direct assault entirely. Venom, Ishmael, and Quiet would go in dark. Get dropped off outside their radar range and infiltrate on foot. "One of those gets so much air time with the robots it's easy to forget there were two of them."

"Dr. Clark?" Venom blinked. Scrambled to reconcile his image of her - an affable, if somewhat sarcastic young woman with obscure, bookish hobbies - with the role of principle investigator on the world's least ethical research team.

"You surprised? She's not the first woman in your life to sucker you with sweetness before she gives you the shaft. But I hope she's the last. Quiet seems about as sweet as battery acid spiked with flamethrower fuel."

"Says the man who wants to fuck a honey badger."

"You said they eat snakes, right? I sure could use my snake sucked right now."

Quiet's chuckle quashed Venom's reply; the back of his neck prickled with heat. It had never bothered him before that she could overhear his conversations - or lack thereof - so he never bothered to close the channel. He had, at first, when he'd wanted to give them both some space, but that had proved unnecessary when they spent days around one another, unshowered. Then he had whenever he'd gone to take a leak or a shit, but abandoned that effort too when he realized that she could literally see him do it. Would be watching him do it, in case they were attacked. Had realized belatedly that he'd forgotten to close it when he'd been lonely and horny enough one night to ask Kaz to talk dirty to him while he jerked off. She'd been kind enough to act like it hadn't happened.

Until he'd been up another night asking for Ocelot's wildlife commentary for the better part of an hour and she'd made a helpful gesture with her fist.

" _Especially_ if the honey badger's doing it, eh?" Ishmael nudged Venom with his elbow and Venom reconsidered whether that score was really settled or not. "He could suck the flesh right off your--"

"Don't. Not now." Not ever. The jealousy he could handle. Venom wasn't so territorial that he would rile at that. Kaz was attractive. He put himself out there. But the subtle traces of contempt lurking in the other man's tone were too much.

"Ah. Shit. Sorry." Genuinely apologetic. Venom hadn't expected that. It disarmed him.

"It's okay," Venom told him, though it wasn't. He changed the subject. "Surprise and enthusiasm look like a losing proposition. We're going to do this the usual way." Quiet hummed her disappointment in response.

"Are we?" Ishmael was skeptical. "That's going to take hours."

"I don't mean 'I'm going to hide behind something while Quiet shoots everyone with tranquilizers'. I mean dark. You and I. Undetected, if possible." No flash, no gimmicks, just old fashioned wetwork. He got the impression the other man would approve.

Ishmael scratched his face, under his balaclava, exposing his beard. "The whole point of us scrambling out here was get here around the same time as your friend Dr. MILF. If we dick around for a couple of hours crawling over rocks and hiding guys in closets she'll have all the time in the world to report her contact with us back to HQ and they'll bug out of there so hard it'll look like a bomb went off."

"It's not work risking my pilots for intel." Nor their hard-earned, expensively bought and upgraded helicopters, as Kaz would remind him. Heck, he and Ocelot might even have agreed on this, for once.

"Intel? Sure, they'll destroy all that, but they'll burn their experiments, too. Only way to be sure, if they're messing around with DNA."

The ghost of tiny fingers on the back of his hand. Venom swallowed. One life. Maybe more. For how many others?

His. Ishmael's. Quiet's. Pequod, Astrea, Titan. The medic they'd brought in case Venom'd gone MIA because he was wounded. But they were dogs, as Bryce had put it. Not men. Their lives were forfeit the moment they'd chosen to pick up a sword instead of a plowshare. How did they stack up against the innocents these wolves had in their jaws?

"So, I've known a lot of pilots in my time." Ishmael drew one knee up, eyes on the back of Pequod's helmet. "It takes a lot of hard training to get to where they are. A lot of risk. They pay their dues as much as any grunt, maybe more."

Venom already knew his pilots were valuable - that was the whole point.

"They didn't sign up to fly tac hel because they wanted to be taxi drivers. If they wanted that, they'd be back home chauffeuring the newscaster giving the drive at five traffic report. Pilots _want_ to fly. They want to kick ass and take names and unleash fury the way only they can."

 

_Please don't ground me, doc. It's only an ankle._

_It's_ broken. __

_I can use the other foot!_

 

Venom knew that, too. A plan was forming in his mind - one he didn't like at all - that would put their skills to best use and just might succeed. One that would force their targets into a cycle of reacting, rather than acting. Maneuver warfare. High risk. Fast and furious.

"Besides, you bought all this fancy armour plating and expensive missiles for your helos - when do you ever use them?" Ishmael was smiling. "I think, just this once, that Kaz would forgive you for pissing some funds away if it meant getting home a couple hours sooner."

Venom mulled that over. Unconvinced. It was his call, ultimately. The girl might already be dead. There might be no other survivors. Kaz and Ocelot might be dead by now, too. He might be sending his best pilot - his _friend_ \- to an early grave to no gain at all.

"Hey... Boss?" Pequod's voice roused him from his thoughts. "We know why you're doing this. We know what's at stake. We would follow you anywhere in the world."

_I would follow you anywhere._

"But if you could, please, consider letting me fire a missile or three at those Cipher motherfuckers I would follow you straight into hell, too."

Venom had never once heard him talk like that; he laughed. "Pequod, it is the least I can do for you. Let's do this. Quiet, take up a position to the southeast." That would put her on high ground, where she'd have a visual on the whole compound. "When Astrea links back up with us we'll maintain our approach from the northwest." With the anti-air radar operational it didn't really matter which direction they came from. The range on their surface-to-air missiles was roughly the same as the ones equipped on his helicopters. A difference of seconds would mean everything. A difference Quiet would supply. "When I give you the signal, take out both of the north-facing SAMs. Astrea and Titan will break off and circle to either side-" Venom was no wing commander, the pilots would know how to maneuver around the compound better than he would. "-and cover Pequod while he makes a pass over the roof. Ishmael and I will fast rope down to it."

"Fast rope?" Ishmael cocked his head. "You said this was your best pilot. I'm sure he can get us within five or six feet off the ground."

Sure, why not. Add more risk. "It's your knees. All right, Ishmael and I'll jump. We'll enter the building and eliminate targets inside while you handle hostiles on the walls and in the courtyard."

Pequod seemed to have no objections. "ROEs, Boss?"

"All targets hostile. Fire at will." He could see Pequod smile; could hear Astrea whistle through Pequod's headset and Titan howl.

He'd had no idea they would see this as anything other than unnecessary risk. But then, how many pilots had he lost on nothing more than simple transport? On evac? On sabotage? How satisfying must it be to turn from the hunted into the hunter? Why would Ishmael - clearly a ground-pounder like himself - understand them better than he did?

"Oh, right, one more thing." Ishmael dug around in his side pockets and fished out a tape, which he held up between two fingers. "Nobody's dying to 'Take On Me' on my watch."

Venom wasn't sure if he should be affronted or embarrassed when Pequod snapped the tape up readily. "It's not all rock." Ishmael patted Venom's shoulder reassuringly. "There's some class in there. You'll like it. You've got loudspeakers, right?" Pequod nodded. "Crank it up until you can hear it over the autocannons. You're wearing hearing protection and they're not. They won't be able to communicate for shit."

That was downright devious, Venom thought, and it must have shown on his face, because Ishmael bothered to defend himself: "Pretty sure you've used noise as a distraction too, Ahab. Benefits of not spending this one creeping through the grass, for once. Let me have some fun."

"I'm not the boss of you." 

"No, you're not."

Pequod's Blackfoot was carrying a grab bag of ammunition, weapons, and supplies. They hadn't known what their Boss's situation was, so the Diamond Dogs support staff had made sure there was a little bit of everything, just in case. Ishmael pawed through it - "Oh, by all means, help yourself," Venom'd told him when he'd already picked out a few mines, claymores, C4, grenades, and a spare suppressor. Venom took one, too, and switched the one he was carrying to a machine pistol. It was unlikely a little gunfire would draw much notice with all the other noise they planned to make, but if any gunfire was going to, it would be a Tornado's. And he didn't plan on taking anyone here - anyone who'd willingly been involved in this - back to Mother Base.

"Take your NVGs," Ishmael suggested. "If they cut the lights in there, you'll thank me."

He felt around a little longer, coming up with a tin of black camouflage face paint. Venom never used it himself, and wondered why Ishmael felt he needed to bother with a balaclava on, until the other man popped the lid off and gestured for him to move closer.

Venom obliged. Closed his eyes as calloused fingertips ran gently in diagonal lines across his face. Oblique. Not to coat it entirely, just to break the symmetry. Kept them closed while Ishmael coaxed his head further forward, to smooth his hair back into one fist, then tie it.

"Stay with me, hm?" Ishmael's lips brushed the top of his head when he spoke. "Don't leave my line of sight."

"Why?" Venom hadn't planned on it.

"I think I might've... done something to you." It didn't suit him to falter with his words. Something was wrong.

"I'm fine." Venom squeezed his hip. 

When they were finished Ishmael opened the door and the cool night air whistled in. The sun had already sunk behind the mountains, outlining them in a blue-grey that faded to black before it reached the stars. The moon had risen behind Bryce's 'fortress' - a relic of some Pakistani conquest, perhaps, or the British after them, fixed up by the Soviets most likely and occupied by Cipher - casting colourless light on ancient stone walls and modern generators. 

Venom could still pick out the dust trail from Colette's truck through his binoculars. Perfect timing.

They sat with their feet on the skid, braced for the jump. It didn't matter; if a missile hit them a closed door wouldn't save them. Venom doubted even Ishmael would survive that wreck: dashed to pieces against the rocks and trees. They could see Astrea to their left and knew Titan was to their right - in formation but not so close that getting hit could send one spiralling into the other. They knew what they were doing.

"Ten seconds until we're in range, Boss!" That was their signal. Nine.

Eight. 

The Cipher soldiers manning the SAM sites would already have their targets locked. Seven.

Six.

Five. "Quiet, GO LOUD!"

The faintest smirk from Ishmael. _I know._ Four.

Pequod pressed play. Three.

The BOOM and whistle of incoming .50 caliber rounds, one after another in the space of less than a breath. Two.

Two launchers went up like fireworks; Quiet had aimed for the warheads and this was what the Barrett was for, for emplacements, not personnel: it ripped right through steel and the explosion took care of the rest, black man-shaped silhouettes hurled twenty, thirty feet back from the flames.

One.

His pilots unleashed their first volley just as Verdi's drums joined the rest of the orchestra.

And then for a few seconds more they waited, powerless. But committed. If Quiet's distraction wasn't enough. If any of the enemy missiles had launched first. If any were aimed at Pequod. These would be the last seconds of their lives.

But it was, and they hadn't, so the Diamond Dogs struck first. The resulting impacts sent fiery shrapnel up into the sky so high the smallest, fluttering pieces grazed Venom's boots. He didn't have time to admire the fissured stone or scorched earth - Ishmael's hand was on his forearm before he knew it and Pequod banked upward as he slowed, just enough that the two of them would survive their leap to the building below.

It still knocked the wind out of him. Sent them both rolling several meters at a speed that would have torn unprotected skin but they both knew to protect their faces. 

Ishmael recovered first. He pulled himself to one knee, drew his pistol, and fired in one fluid motion; a Cipher soldier who'd thrown himself flat against the roof at the sight of the incoming missiles. Not a bad move. What else could he have done?

The shot to the chest left him twitching. Ishmael fired one through his temple a half-second later. _No prisoners. No survivors,_ he mouthed to Venom.

This one time only, Venom agreed.

There was a ladder down to the top floor but no way to take it safely; Ishmael gestured that they swing down through one of the windows. There was no lip on the roof to cling to - visons of himself splattered across the courtyard stones made Venom shake his head. Drop a flashbang down the ladder and follow it up with a grenade.

Ishmael shrugged. Venom slid down with his gloves and boots on the side rails. Ishmael dropped down behind him, unphased by the seeping severed leg he stepped over to reach the two writhing men on the ground. Two more shots. Both through the eye.

The combination of ordnance and orchestra was far too loud for either of them to hear the other, but it didn't matter. Venom swept the hallway. Ishmael moved up to the door to the stairs. Kicked it open when Venom reached him. Venom cleared it. Ishmael moved. They stacked up at the landing, against the wall, in the shadows and out of sight.

The ground floor was far more populated. Cipher troops had gathered inside to flee the chaos outside. The more experienced ones tried to rally them into some plan of action - waiting in here might spare them for a few minutes but the helos could level the building as easily as they had destroyed anything else. They could hardly hear one another, even at a scream.

Too many for a pistol. Far too many to fight fairly. That was neither of their MOs. Venom switched to his rifle. Thumbed it to automatic. Ishmael followed suit. Took out his own flashbang. Venom nodded. Covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut, face turned away and when he recovered enough to join him Ishmael was already firing. Down on his knees. Venom took high. Aimed bursts at the chest and head; the legendary soldier did not spray bullets like a raw recruit. No, he reminded himself when skulls and visors and ribs caved in dying men clawed and thrashed that all of these men had stood by and watched children die and done nothing.

He leaned against the wall, panting, when the last of them no longer moved. While Ishmael set up claymores at the entrance, facing outward. They circled the building to repeat the process. Moving. Covering. Moving. Covering. Words weren't necessary. Not even hand signals.

When they had eliminated every last possibility they turned to the stairs leading downward. The door at the bottom was locked and barred. Ishmael planted C4 on it while Venom covered him. They jogged back up the stairs. Took cover when Ishmael depressed the button.

He felt the pressure wave. The sharp bang of the door flung wide open. Then vibrations through his feet, up into his shins. Under his hands. Wait, had he heard something? The stairs _lurched_ \--

NO.

\--Ishmael shoved him out of the stairwell and moved to follow suit but the stone turned _concave_ with gut-wrenching wrongness first and he vanished under a suffocating mass of rocks, dust, and sand.

Venom swallowed.

Curled his outstretched hand into a fist.

_Oh lord, I can't change  
Lord help me, I can't change_

 

I agree he looks good playing it, but I thought rock was for the unwashed masses, not highly educated surgeons like yourself.

It is, usually. But this guitar solo's something else.

Not very highbrow of you to be won over by a guitar solo.

Higher brow than what's winning you over.

Why aren't you ever this mouthy with anyone else, doc?

 

Because I am

Because you are

Venom didn't know how long he'd been digging frantically through the rubble when his rational mind finally regained control. Only that his gloves were shredded and those fingernails that weren't ripped off entirely were bloody and broken. His rational mind stilled the scream that had begun to form on his lips with the need to observe before acting.

The gaping hole in the floor revealed that there were multiple sublevels below this one. If Ishmael was alive, he was down there. If he was up here, he was dead. Crushed under tonnes of stone.

Venom peered down into it. Blackness. The faint outline of a pile some multiple stories down. Not a survivable fall.

NO.

If something had broken his fall on the way down, Ishmael could have survived. 

HAD TO have survived.

Venom eased his way around it and through the door. He realized that the whole building was now unstable, and that he could be buried alive, too. He also realized that he didn't mind. 

Yes, here. Here were hospital beds and examination tables knocked in disarray. Glassware smashed on the floor, either from impact or haste. Charts he did not stop peruse - even if he had, he wouldn't have understood them anyway.

So his mind told him. 

His eye glanced at one page, saw "ABI", and he knew that it meant ankle-brachial index and that it could be used to predict peripheral artery disease. 

_Must have picked that up from ~~your~~ my time in Dhekelia._

That wasn't even his _voice_. The only time he'd spent conscious in Dhekelia he hadn't LEARNED A FUCKING THING ABOUT MEDICAL CHARTS.

Down, down, down.

The layers of stone and earth dampened the cacophony above. Venom removed his ear plugs and replaced his ear piece. Quiet hummed and he hummed along with her. 

The first signs of life were sobs from the room ahead. Low, uncertain murmured voices of reassurance. Hyperventilating breaths. 

Pathetic.

These beds were full of still bodies. A cluster of men and women in scrubs and white coats cowered near a barred door. One of them raised a shaking pistol in Venom's direction; Venom shot him through the forehead as an unthinking reflex. Gasps. Sobs. Cries. His head snapped backwards and one of them caught him as he fell. None of the rest were armed.

Venom paced.

"D-do you speak English?" Oh. They thought he was Russian.

"Yes," he responded, fluently.

"Oh thank god. We surrender!" 

Part I, Article 4.

"Under whose authority? Which military are you the medical support staff for?"

Uncomprehending whispers. The speaker bit her nails and the man behind her took a bold step toward Venom. Shrank back when Venom turned to him. "We--"

"Are outside the protection of the law. So far outside it." Venom shook his head.

"We were made to come here under threat of force and we are _unarmed_." His jaw clenched tight; he was trembling.

Such an obvious tell, but Venom didn't need it. He walked to the bedsides of an old woman and, from what he knew now, was probably her son. Just pinpricks of blood. They were enough. "Cardiac injections. Couldn't spare the bullets?"

The other man seemed to realize, at length, through his panic and terror that he could take the dead man's pistol and the moment he did so Venom shot him in the chest. Through the heart. He flopped and jerked - no one moved to catch him.

No one moved to take up the weapon again. 

"You won't--"

"Yes I will." Venom pulled the trigger.

Hmm, hmm. Hmm mmm. They'd hummed. Venom hummed.

_Let's let the Boss decide._

Cowards. You're cowards. Don't you believe in anything? Rush me. Curse me. Tell Big Boss to go fuck himself. Bryce was braver than you. He'd had convictions, however twisted. 

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

But no. They died one after another. Weeping. Legs shaking too much to even run for their lives. The only reason they died facing him. 

Until the last man. Young for the white coat he wore. Dark-haired, blue-eyed. He stood up straight with his hand over his heart. He was _humming_.

_What so proudly we hailed  
At the twilight's last gleaming_

_"You see your brother?" The heat of that hand cools, but it does not move._

_"My brother was a soldier." The beginning is familiar. Rehearsed._

_"His unit was hit by artillery--_

_\--left him paralyzed, and blind--_

_\--support from our neighbours dried up when popular support for the war did--_

_\--medical bills, he felt like a burden, even though we loved him--_

"He swallowed a bullet when I was twelve." 

The man in front of Venom was still humming.

_And the rockets' red glare!  
The bombs bursting in air!_

~~S~~ HE WAS A PATRIOT.

~~S~~ HE MEANT EVERYTHING TO ME.

~~S~~ HE LEFT A HOLE INSIDE OF ME THAT WILL NEVER BE FILLED.

No no no no _no_ stop stop _stop_ Stop, please. Please!

That pale-eyed demon with the bloody hands and bloody throat has no mercy. He doesn't stop. Not ever. Venom can cry and plead and even pray all he likes, but this colourless creature isn't human. He speaks a hundred tongues in a thousand voices, all in the same soothing tone. 

THIS PAIN IS MINE. WITHOUT IT I AM _NOTHING_. 

Oh? Tell me about this pain. If it's what I think it is, you might just be able to keep it. In a sense. 

No. No, I can't tell you. I've never told anyone.

His laughter is humourless because he doesn't feel; it mimics amusement in the same way he mimics human flesh. 

One of these days I'll teach you how to lie. Don't you _want_ to keep it? It's everything you are.

No. _No_. I'll die first.

Oh I'm not going to _kill you_ , Радость моя. I'm going to erase you. Turn you into a hollow toy I can climb inside and pull your strings. 

~~Jack~~ he means every word of this. Please let me wake up. ~~Jack~~ you promised me you'd wake me up.

But if you're _very good_ , and you tell me _everything_ , I'll let you keep this one piece.

I... I...

They killed ~~her~~ him.

_"No, you did."_

"No." Venom growled, and raised his

_Tiny, trembling hand._

_"I can't do this by myself. I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry. But you know I can't ask mom. You know how to use it, right? Like I taught you."_

_He did._

_"Just promise me one thing. That you'll never become a soldier."_

BANG.

Venom crumpled to the ground. There was so much blood from the bodies it pooled over his fingers while he watched, panting. So much that his tears were swallowed by it, drowned in it, the instant they pattered against the surface.

He didn't look up when the bar was thrown from behind the door, and it creaked open. If an enemy had been behind it, he could have shot Venom dead. But it wasn't; dust-coated spetsnaz boots broke his shrunken field of view.

"Ah, shit." A knee followed. Olive fatigues turned desert camo with all the dirt. The blood soaked the fabric through. Venom was gently eased down to sit. "It's okay. I'm here now."

"I told you." Venom reached for Ishmael's face.

"Told me what?" Ishmael caught his wrist.

"Everything." And he had responded in kind. And Venom had understood. They had understood each other. In a way that even the men they loved could not, and never would.

He must have known what he was going to do, but when Venom tugged the balaclava off, Ishmael made no move to stop him. Not that it made any difference. Ishmael's face was a blank spot in his mind. He could discern individual parts - that Ishmael had a beard, that he had one blue eye, that his nose had been broken and set - but the whole would not come together in an image, no matter how hard he tried.

Venom drew crimson stripes down it with his fingertips. 

There. Close enough.

"I know who you are," he said.

"Who am I?" he asked.

"You're everything I could never be. And I am everything you could never be."

"Hm. Poetic, as always."

"You want poetry?"

"Only from you."

Venom rose to his feet and pulled Ishmael with him. "Then,

_Let us stride forward on the bones of patriots  
While the weight of the world crushes them to dust_

_Set it aflame_  
And let the future  
Grow from their ashes." 

Ishmael's mouth smiled; his eye hardened. He made no move to wipe the lines of blood away. "That's what _you_ want? You. Not... me."

"Me? I thought I died alone, a long long time ago," Venom laughed, wiping his face with his sleeve. The black camouflage paint left a smear across his eyes.

"Oh no, not you." _We never lost control._ "You and I are going to live forever."

War, famine, disease. Yes, they would live forever.

"You know what I want. Soldiers aren't the disposable tools of their governments. You can't ask a man to give his life and limbs for you, then cast him aside." _Condemned to the trash heap of history, where you belong._ "You wouldn't even treat a dog that way." 

"Then follow me, Ahab," Ishmael told him, needlessly. _I know what you're going to do. And I will do nothing to stop you._

They were interrupted by reverberations that shook the walls around them, accompanied by the shrieking grind of steel on steel so loud that it carried all the way down to where they stood. Tonnes of metal spinning end over end as it fell out of the sky, and it dashed itself apart against the ground. Familiar enough to both of them that they flinched, and took a step closer together.

"We need to get the fuck out of here," Ishmael said, also needlessly. "The way up's passable?" 

Venom nodded. Followed Ishmael's bloody bootprints at a half-jog until a child's cry back from the direction they came froze him in place. "Oh, _Vic_ \--"

But Venom was already running. He skidded over the blood and stumbled over the bodies, which was how Ishmael caught up to him. The rubber treads of his boots were littered with broken glass and when he ran it crunched and clinked; his shins bumped into stools and he shouldered trays over, a path of debris Ishmael moved through silently, fluidly, at his shoulder.

Past the false hospital rooms and into a real laboratory. Half collapsed but the lights were still on. Microscopes, flasks, fume hoods, centrifuges, pipettes, plastic trays. The stink of agar and alcohol. Colette, red-faced, harried, dark curls in disarray, shoving papers, hard drives, plastic tubes into the largest autoclave he'd ever seen.

But, really, how many autoclaves had he seen?

_Hahahahaha you couldn't take that from me because you don't even know what that_ is.

"Where is she?" Venom barked, a second before he realized the answer, and he raised his weapon a second too late to keep her from slamming the door shut.

Click.

He burst forward and hurled her aside with a force that sent sent her flying, stopped only by a nearby bench, and she collapsed in a heap beneath it, moaning. It was locked, it was locked, it was locked, and it hummed because she'd turned it on. 

Venom's vision tunneled into one small circle; just the space directly in front of his eye. "Tell me you killed her first," in a snarl that no longer sounded like his own voice.

"No, I only--"

Venom picked up stool and hammered it against the plate where the water pipe connected to the plumbing in the wall until he'd bashed it right off and fluid spilled from the severed connection. The electrical cord was trickier - it was hard-wired, not plugged into an outlet - but he spent only the briefest of pauses before he figured out a way to do it without electrocuting himself and, with the puddle, everyone else in the room. He fired his metal fist into the junction box embedded into the wall. Sparks flew and every machine in the room flickered dead. Dark.

A hum, and then the emergency lighting bathed them in orange-red.

Colette was stirring. She had a bloody lip and looked dazed enough to be concussed.

"What is that? An incinerator?" Ishmael asked. 

Venom shook his head. He didn't have time to fill this hole among the many in Ishmael's repertoire of knowledge. All he needed to know was: "It's airtight." He rounded on Colette, who reeled backwards. She must have seen Ishmael - Venom could never muster any measure of menace. "Open it."

"I can't, now, you--"

" _Open it._ " He punctuated the command with a kick to her stomach; her eyes bulged and she heaved. Venom was not playing, not hesitating, not _fucking around_ \- there was no _time_ for bullshit mind games and interrogations. There would be a key to unlock it manually in case of emergency situations _exactly like this_. When you put something, by mistake, that you REALLY FUCKING SHOULDN'T HAVE inside and couldn't get it open. A key, because a latch could open by accident, and that would be dangerous.

She met his eyes under her dark lashes and she knew that he knew, and she said, "Why should I? You're going to kill me anyway."

Yes, almost certainly. What was he to do? Promise her her life? Tell her that he would keep her locked up as his own personal lab rat, like Huey? What if she'd rather die? Why would she believe he would keep her alive one second longer than it took to get that door open? She was far too intelligent for that.

Venom was lost. They were at an impasse. He didn't know her. He couldn't play on her fears. He didn't know what she would find worse than death, aside from pain, and she knew she'd only have to stand it for a few minutes until the point was moot. He would have turned to Ishmael, but Ishmael'd told him he had to stand on his own two feet.

No, he'd told him that he could still ask him for advice. Venom turned to him, imploring.

Ishmael, standing behind him, leaned close to his ear: "You know _exactly_ what she's afraid of."

Right. He did.

_"She's not afraid of being_ shot _."_

_\--the limits of an angry dog at the end of the chain to reach the tent flap, which she tied wide open._

_"Go be a gentleman, Lyosha."_

Venom picked her up by the front of her shirt, his fingers hooked under bra, and dropped her on her back on the bench. "Yes, I'm going to kill you. But my friend and I are going to have a little a fun first." The buttons of it popped off easily when he tugged and flew spinning to the floor. He'd already yanked her bra up around her collarbones; her breasts had dark nipples, and they heaved as she panicked, struggled. He could see the whites of her eyes and she kicked and clawed and thrashed as hard as Bryce had when he'd severed his spinal cord.

He was so much stronger than her that it didn't matter, though.

 

_"Just to be clear, Boss: I am allowed to use physical methods, but I'm not allowed to cause permanent injury? Those are your_ only _rules?"_

_"Yes. Why do you ask, Ocelot? I'm giving you permission to torture prisoners. I know you'll cause them pain."_

_"Well, there are a_ lot _of things that won't cause permanent injury that I don't think you really want me doing."_

_"Like what? Water boarding? Electrocution? I don't ca--"_

_The creak of leather squeezed._

_"...Oh. ...No, Ocelot. No. Never. If I catch any of your interrogators using those methods they'll answer to me."_

_"You won't."_

 

Venom didn't want to do this. He didn't feel anything; no, he felt sick. She was so terrified there were tears on her cheeks and he had no doubt that if he let her, she would have clawed his eye out. He already knew what it meant; Kaz had nearly done the same to him, once, when he'd awoken but before Kaz really had, seen that he had morning wood and rolled on top of him. Squeezed his cock and slid a finger inside him. Venom still had the scar from Kaz's teeth and Kaz punched a _lot_ harder than Colette did.

_Go ahead, coward. Let someone suffocate because this is giving you a guilty conscience._ Telltale stretchmarks on her soft abdomen; how could someone with _children_ do this? He peeled her underwear down along with her khakis and cock did not stir at all. Nothing about this was enticing. Nothing about this made him want to fuck.

_"It's not about_ sex _, it's about demonstrating the power you have over your subject. It's contempt. Dehumanization. Humiliation." More helpful psychology bullshit from Ocelot. Ocelot his kindly mentor, explaining the facts of life._

_"Yeah, I get it. It's not about sex. It's unnatural."_

_"Oh, no, it's the most natural thing in the world." With a smile. "Animals do it too. Males'll do it to other males to dominate them. Do it to females for the same reason, sometimes, or for the same reason soldiers have for ages: genocide. Of course, we can take care of that, these days. And for some that's the end of it - for others, that pain never really goes away."_

No, he'd never said that last part. That didn't sound like something Ocelot would say. 

"Need a little help?" Ishmael's lips brushed the back of his neck. His eye fluttered closed.

They were burning hot, and they trailed from just under his scalp, down to Venom's shoulders. Ishmael's other hand was on his hip; he stroked his hip bone with his thumb, ran it along the groove between that ridge and the muscles of his stomach. The other man pressed into his back, where he could smell his crisp smoke and feel his damp sweat. Cigars, brass, copper, sand, gunpowder.

Please, yes. 

That got Venom's blood flowing, at last. It flushed his skin and drained downward; he kept his eye closed, and held Colette tightly, by the throat, as Ishmael unfastened his sneaking suit. He did so as smoothly, as easily as Quiet - easier than one-handed Kaz - only her fingers were delicate, skillful. His were broad and firm. Hers were refreshingly cool to the touch in the desert heat; his were heated and sent welcome pulses of warmth coursing through Venom's entire body.

Ishmael massaged his muscles as his freed them; Venom's cock was stiff by the time he peeled the suit down far enough to free his erection, and Venom's lips parted when Ishmael palmed it. Ishmael tugged his head around by the ponytail and crushed his over them. Filled that space with his rough tongue. Venom opened it wider.

Neither of them had eaten since they'd been drunk and Ishmael's spit tasted awful; acrid tobacco and dehydration, but Venom knew his would taste even worse - he'd almost thrown up and there was fuzz on his teeth. He hadn't brushed them in days. Didn't seem to matter to Ishmael, who pressed in harder and harder, until Venom could hardly breathe. He moved, turned his head; Ishmael held him firm. The blood he'd painted on the other man's face leaked into Venom's mouth, along with the camouflage paint - _you don't know what's in that, you don't know where that's been_ \- yet he didn't fight it. His cock pulsed, throbbed, for Ishmael's leisurely strokes.

It took more willpower than Venom would care to admit to push Ishmael away by the chest. To grasp the thread his rational mind dangled and follow it back to their purpose, here.

The unabashed lust in Ishmael's eye could swallow him whole if he wasn't careful. "You first, Lyosha."

There was no doubt in Venom's mind that Ishmael would do it, too. "Thanks, Sasha." He kicked Colette's knees apart with contempt he truly did feel and forced himself to _look at her_ , not to run from what he was _willing to do_ , and as he leaned forward and his tip met her crushingly tight, dry hole, with Ishmael pressed against his back, guiding his hips, it _did feel good_ \--

"I swallowed it." Quiet. Tearful. Honest.

Venom reached back and grabbed Ishmael's knife before either of them could react. Plunged it into her torso just beneath her ribcage and dragged it to the side in a broad cut; Ishmael reached past him to hold her down while she shrieked. Spat blood in Venom's face. The stomach was easy to find. Large. He yanked it out and squeezed it in his hands; feeling. No. Just as he thought, a blunt metal object would still be lodged in her esophagus. He severed that connection with the knife and forced his hand in under her ribs, past her lungs - he could feel them inflate rapidly, along with the feverish beating of her heart - until he felt it. A solid lump.

His shoulders slumped briefly with relief - she hadn't been lying to him. He squeezed the tube above it and dragged it out with his fingers; she'd stopped thrashing and was spasming, now, kicking the legs of the bench involuntarily. He didn't care. He turned immediately to the autoclave and when the blood-soaked key slid in and turned and it clicked and he pulled the door open and felt the rush of warm, humid air, he also heard a suppressed gunshot behind him.

Venom shoved the damp documents and electronics out of the way and grabbed the girl. He pulled her out as gently, as carefully as he could manage and laid her on the floor. His sutures had held. She wasn't conscious, but her colour was good and when he listened for her breathing, it was soft, but steady. As was her pulse.

He uttered a sad little laugh as relief left him so drained he sagged around her. "She sedated her. Probably didn't want to hear her cry in there..." Sedated, she hadn't panicked and hyperventilated and used up her air supply quickly. Colette had saved the girl's life through cowardice.

Ishmael knelt at his side. "Was it worth it?"

Yes. Bryce was right. It was worth it. "We'll take her back to Mother Base. She needs surgery." And a new leg, probably. Kaz would grumble at the expense, at first; Venom knew that he would eventually give in. 

"Then I'm glad. But now we need to get--"

" _Thank you_." Venom caught him by the collar, tilted his own head back, and pulled him down to continue that kiss. He eased the girl down carefully, and released her; she was fine. She would be fine. "I couldn't have done this without you."

"I could say the same." Ishmael thumb stroked his bare throat. He looked cautious. Calculating. Unwilling to commit until he knew where this was going.

Venom unclasped Ishmael's belt to remove all doubt.

Ishmael's kiss turned crushing again and he pressed Venom to the floor, hands on either side of his head. Venom unbuttoned his shirt and sucked heatedly on that invading tongue. Ishmael broke the kiss and leaned back on his knees just long enough to toss it off, along with his undershirt, and say: "This means 'yes', you know."

"I know." Venom might not be able to make sense of his face, but he could put together every part of Ishmael's broad chest and thick shoulders and the scrape of his hair against his own, much smoother torso. He knew that scar.

No you don't.

No, he didn't. Didn't matter, though. He'd wanted this for _days_ and now he finally had it. 

_He'd known where this was going from the moment the door shut. The touches, the conversation, they only prolonged the inevitable. He wasn't stupid, nor was he naive - there was one reason and one reason only they would share a bed, out of the rain, out of the earshot of the rest of the men._

_What the other man didn't know was that he could have had this any time he wanted. All he had to do was take it._

After all, they'd shared something so much more intimate than sex.

Ishmael's heavy weight on top of him; Venom's thighs spread for him as readily as they had in Colombia and Ishmael knelt between them. His head at the perfect height to bite Venom's nipple - Venom inhaled sharply, and moaned when Ishmael suckled it. A very pleasant pain. Ishmael's lips followed the line between his chest and stomach muscles, past his navel, into his pubic hair, and onto his still half-hard cock. The rough scrape of his dry tongue along his shaft made Venom's toes curl; he brought his knees up. He braced as the other man's tongue worked toward his tip - Ishmael _would put his mouth on anything, he would lick under his foreskin and clean him even if neither of them had showered in days and they'd walked through a waist-deep swamp._

You don't have a foreskin, though.

That's right, he was cut. So was Ishmael. The other man paused there, regardless, before moving on to his head and swallowing it and when it hit the back of Ishmael's throat and slid in even further Venom's back arched right off the ground. He was used to this, Kaz could do this too, but where Kaz could tease, Ishmael sucked _hard_ and Venom moaned and writhed like the other man was stabbing him.

The click of a Tornado's cocking hammer stilled them both. 

Panting, Venom rolled his head to the side. Ishmael pulled his off slowly, saliva and precum spilling from his mouth. "Quiet?"

The skin around her eyes was black. She stood with her feet apart, the barrel of the revolver aimed at Ishmael's head. 

Venom moved in front of him. "Quiet, what's wrong?" Realized that, again, he'd left the channel open between them and that she'd heard everything. ...But so what? He doubted she was such an ardent supporter of his faithfulness to Kaz that she'd kill the man who tempted him into relinquishing his virtue--

Oh. Shit.

Ishmael's face was bared. They spoke in their own voices. Had she overheard them at the hospital? Had they spoken? Had she seen Ishmael's face? "Quiet, I told you - he's a friend." _You tried to kill me. Us. You'd have done the same._

She vanished; dissolved and reappeared around behind them; Venom pushed Ishmael back and covered his body with his own.

Something about this seemed to go beyond revenge. Venom was so tired of not understanding; so tired of feeling like the actions of others were a joke at his expense, and that everyone was in on it, except for him. "Quiet. If you kill him, we're done."

That gave her pause. Venom wasn't sure what he would actually do if it came to that, but after today he had no doubt that he could be decisive and cold-blooded if he needed to be. Had to be.

What he would give to never have to be again.

"You know, as your pack grows, I've found the wolves start to want to join it, too," Ishmael was saying. Venom wanted to tell him that this wasn't the time for half-baked philosophy, to leave that to Ocelot, but he didn't know what else to do. Quiet seemed to be listening to him. "That's what you called them, right? People like her. XOF assassins. She was part of them. Everything they did." The massacre at Dhekelia, the burned bodies piled high in Africa. 

"I know that." She'd changed. People change. She followed him now. She was all but a part of him - his artificially improved steel right hand to match his left. She hadn't killed anyone unless he'd ordered her to since he'd taken her.

"These wolves, you see, will make for some of your most valuable allies." Ishmael's voice was utterly unaffected by the gun to their heads. By the fact that they were unarmed and half-naked. "You'll want to feed them, play with them, praise them like you would any of your tame animals. But never forget what they really are."

\-- _forget that at your own peril_ \--

"Or you might someday find their jaws around your neck." 

Venom stood. Unashamed. She'd seen it all before. She'd even seen him aroused before. She was unperturbed. He took a step toward her, palm up, as if he were approaching a wild animal. "Quiet. He's not going to join us. He has his own forces. And I'm sure they have no one like you." The state she'd caught them in was proof enough of that. With what the parasites had done to her, Ishmael was no threat. He was an ally. Stand down.

"And hey, Quiet?" Ishmael's voice turned warm, familiar. Amused. "He's stone cold sober, this time. You don't need to play chaperone."

Oh.

Is that what happened.

Quiet lowered the weapon, a strangeness to her body language that Venom couldn't read until he took another step foward. Her lips were dark. Her nipples hard. Her pupils dilated. 

Oh.

"Loyalty like that isn't free." Ishmael rose to his own feet, though he stayed where he was. "Reward her."

No, Venom never could separate intimacy and sex. The two were one and the same, weren't they? _I would never have refused you_ , Venom thought, as he bent his head down to press his lips to hers. Hands on her shoulders.

She grabbed a fistful of his facial hair. 

She tasted clean, like water and sunlight. But if Ishmael smelled faintly of gunpowder she _reeked_ of it - potent .50 caliber propellant dusted across her skin and all through her hair. Her tongue was smooth; her teeth, sharp. She used them to break the kiss, pulling his head down between her breasts. This bent his neck at an awkward angle; she booted his feet out from under him and forced him to his knees. Untied the slim scrap of cloth she wore over them and tugged him forward so that he could lick and suck obediently at her tits.

She tolerated this for a little while before jerking his head down further; he pushed his tongue into her navel - she had no breath to catch, but her hum was pleased. 

By the time he reached her underwear it was soaked through. He breathed in that heady scent before dragging his teeth lightly over the fabric. Her clit throbbed and swelled for him; he squeezed it gently between his teeth and she hit him with the back of her hand. Hard enough to sting. He lapped it with his tongue instead, apologetically.

She hummed again, eager. The sound filled his wet cock with blood. _Wait, this is isn't right._

No, it's right.

I don't like--

Yes, you do.

You like women who could push a man down and take what they wanted. Who handled dangerous machines like they could, would handle you given half the chance.

_He'd known something was wrong at a young age. Flipped through the magazines his brother secreted away and felt absolutely nothing at the images of naked bodies bared invitingly before him._

That's because The coy flirtatious kind most men favour do absolutely nothing for you. No, when it comes to women, what really gets your blood pumping is bold confidence, open sexuality, a hint of risk - in essence, Eva.

Ah, yes. That's right. Thinking about Eva grinding his hips down hard into the rug as she rode him; about Quiet, finally shoving him onto his back in the ACC and straddling his face. These got him hard. When they came to mind he was _definitely_ hard, it felt so good to think of these things it was like he could feel lips, a throat, closed around his cock and long hair brushing against his belly.

Quiet had peeled her underwear to the side so that his tongue could touch her skin directly; soft hair rasped against it. Out of habit or necessity, he didn't know, didn't care. It wasn't like the Diamond Dogs supplied her with razors. She was as filthy as he and Ishmael and just as he'd predicted that sandstorm had done her no favours, but he didn't care about that, either. He tongued the grains out and swallowed them. Before long she was dripping; she began to taste sweet.

"Do you mind?" Ishmael's voice rumbled, low and thick. Venom glanced backward out of the corner of his eye; the other man had his cock in his hand, fully erect.

Quiet shook her head 'no', and got down on her knees, bringing Venom with her. His breathing grew ragged with anticipation - yes, yes, this is what he'd been waiting for for _two days_.

_Tame me. Cut my throat. You could have taken me any time you wanted to._

He felt the suit tugged down to his knees, down on all fours. He pressed his tongue into Quiet's folds even more heatedly, rapidly, noises of pleasure spilling over his lips and against her. He heard Ishmael spit into his hands - they had nothing else - and between his ass cheeks before he worked two digits in roughly.

_I can take more than that,_ Venom wanted to say, but his mouth was busy.

Ishmael kept him waiting. Pressed calloused fingertips into his prostate and squeezed his length with the other hand, until both were uncomfortably swollen. "Please," Venom mumbled against Quiet's clit and she chuckled. Nodded.

Ishmael seized his bucking hips and stilled them before guiding his tip in; it stretched and stung and he _loved_ it, because it had been ages since Kaz had last bent him over and fucked him, and their bedroom conversations had finally reached a level of peace that he was unwilling to shatter by asking for something Kaz might not want to give.

Ishmael eased his cock in up to the root; Venom could feel the other man's pubic hair against his skin, feel his balls slap his the backs of his thighs, feel him hard and thick and heavy inside him. 

Then he started thrusting.

The press of Ishmael's blunt tip down into his prostate rapidly turned Venom into a gasping mess; sweat broke out across his back and soaked his beard. The other man had released his cock, leaving that pleasure alone to start pooling in his abdomen. The movements of his mouth turned clumsy; he tried to apologize to Quiet, but she grasped his right hand instead and sucked on his fingers, forcing him down onto his metal forearm.

Two of these she guided into her glistening, slippery slit and eased them up into her hole; guiding him as to exactly how deep she wanted them, how fast, how hard, how hooked. Then she simply ground her clit against his face, which jerked as Ishmael drilled him.

Venom could hardly see them, but he could hear them - both of them low in pitch and volume; Quiet throaty, Ishmael gravelly. The pressure built in his stomach and his cock wept onto the floor.

Something passed between the other two, again. Quiet patted his hip, made a gesture with her gloved hand that Venom couldn't see.

"Yeah, sure...," Ishmael agreed between pants. "It's pretty nice. Be... my guest."

The empty space left behind when Ishmael's cock was suddenly removed was uncomfortable enough to make Venom groan in dismay. Quiet pushed him backwards, and up; Ishmael caught his shoulders and eased him down onto his back. 

Quiet straddled him. Guided his cock into her and Venom's half-lidded eye flew wide open, because he'd never--

Yes, you have.

Yes, he had. But it had been _ages_ and there was more space but it was _so wet_ , and she could clamp down around his shaft _so hard_. 

"Grows on you, huh?" Ishmael ran his fingers over the dripping mess on Venom's face, then licked them. Watched it, an arm around him, wracked with the throes of ecstasy as Quiet ground her hips into his, milked his cock with her muscles; the faint outlines of her abs were as intoxicating as the bounce of her breasts and the hungry look she gave him. Like she could devour him. "Thought you'd like it."

Then he slipped those fingers into Venom's gasping mouth, and Venom gagged. Those had been inside him. _Ugh._ "His mouth looks lonely, though." Quiet hummed her agreement.

Ishmael kicked his own pants off all the way and straddled Venom's gasping face. " _No_ ," Venom spat, at last, before he could be smothered between the other man's thick thighs. 

\-- _No. No! Not unless you've showered - with_ soap _! Go find Miller if you want someone to lick shit out of your asshole!_ \--

"Still a princess." Ishmael tapped his cheek affectionately, pulled his mouth open by squeezing his jaw, instead. Pushed his cock past his lips and down into his throat before Venom could protest; he could have bitten him, but the taste was mostly gone. Ishmael must have wiped himself clean. 

_Why didn't you tell me that?_ Venom mused, while the other man fucked his mouth, wondering if Ishmael didn't like to see the disgruntled expression on his face. Didn't like the idea of watching him shudder as something filthy was shoved into his body.

Well, that image made Venom shudder, too, but not with horror. His cheeks flushed; he grasped Ishmael's thigh and tilted his head back nicely for him so that he could thrust his cock all the way into his throat, breathing through his nose.

Quiet's hips began to stutter; her muscles fluttered around Venom's cock and he moaned plaintively around Ishmael's. Dazedly, through the slit of his eye he saw her lean forward and lick a line of blood and precum off Ishmael's chin.

His cock _jumped_. It was oozing, spilling, leaking when Quiet eased herself up onto unsteady knees, and his cock slipped out of her. That hunger satisfied; she wasn't going to give him the use of her body for his pleasure unless it was hers, too. He couldn't swallow the soft whimper of dismay.

Ishmael pulled his own leaking cock out with a groan; it popped over Venom's slick lips as the seal of spit broke. "You've been _so_ good. How do you want to get off?" Ishmael leaned down on his elbows over Venom's face. Kissed him. "Ask me anything. There's nothing _I'm_ too good for."

"Just fuck me." Please. It had been so long. Kaz was long since healed - no more excuses to insist that he take the lead, that he do _whatever he needs_ to Venom, so ready to oblige. A few times, Kaz even took his meaning. Pushed him over his desk and called him a _fucking slut_ and a few words he didn't understand in Japanese - in _Russian_ \- while he pounded him and Venom fought the realization of what the other man was getting out of this, desperately. He had no one else to ask. Ocelot, he couldn't. ...Ocelot would, though. Ocelot wanted to. Ocelot, with his calm, easy sm-- --his smile as he left the syringe for Huey-- -- _fist around the blade as he tugged it out, smiling--_

_"These are bad for you, you know."_

Ocelot was his platonic old friend - like a brother to him. He wanted to fuck Ocelot so badly it burned a hole in his conscience. Ocelot _terrified_ him.

That all makes sense to you, though. Trust me.

No cognitive dissonance here.

No fear, no worry that he would damage him in some way with Ishmael. Just trust, as the other man moved around him and Venom spread his legs for him once more and Ishmael thrust his cock into Venom's stretched, willing hole. Venom wrapped his thighs around Ishmael's hips and coaxed him in further, deeper, harder, _more_. Received his kiss and his rough caresses and returned them all. 

So close. So close. Not empty anymore. Not with him. They'd lost different parts and they were all jammed back together now, sweaty and desperate and grunting, Ishmael's hand on the back of his head so that it didn't bounce off the stone. Venom's whole body tensed and his eye rolled back--

~~Jack~~

\--was pumping him full of seed while Venom's own spattered across his chest and stomach. 

And Quiet silently fingered herself to a second orgasm, watching them.

 

 

By the time they climbed back up above ground the battle was over. Venom knew he'd only find two helicopters waiting for him, both landed. The wreckage of the third lay half-strewn across the courtyard, half-embedded in the fortress wall. The cabin was crushed; whatever pieces of Titan the medic could salvage would be what lay in the body bag Astrea's helicopter carried. 

Quiet had rebuffed his attempts to offer her modesty in the form of Colette's bloody clothes to replace her own damp scraps - "You know what you smell like, right?" - to which she'd _hmphed_ and vanished inside Pequod's helicopter.

"How many kills'd he get?" Venom overheard Ishmael ask Pequod and Astrea, as Venom delivered the unconscious girl over into the ~~other~~ medic's care. 

"More than both of us combined," Pequod admitted, then explained: "When the center of the building collapsed and we lost his signal we all thought the Boss had bit it. Didn't realize you'd gone underground."

"I told him if he kept making passes that low he was going to join you in Valhalla." Astrea shook her head, some admiration in her sigh. "But some of them had rigged the place to blow on you. He spotted them. Gunned them all down and took an RPG to the tail rotor. Too close to the buildings to land."

"Saved our lives." Ishmael acknowledged.

"Best mission we ever had." Pequod hopped off her skid and climbed into his own cockpit. 

"You boys go on ahead." Astrea waved them off. "I'm going to take the first chance I've had in days to not piss in bucket."

Venom joined Quiet on Pequod's helicopter. She hauled him up, and he turned around to offer his own hand to Ishmael. "Going my way?"

"Yeah, I guess I could use a ride." Ishmael took it. Hopped up beside him, as Pequod spun up the blades. "I'll get off at your refueling station."

Venom settled into his side comfortably. Dawn was still hours away. He'd spend the first leg sleeping on the seats with Ishmael, the second, with Quiet. But first he pressed the button to view Jaguar's updates; braced himself for what he knew must be coming. His choice had killed Kaz and Ocelot, too.

_Eight shots fired. Two from below deck and six from the signals room._

_Commander Miller reporting two survivors: himself and Ocelot. States Ocelot is in critical condition._

_Assault team confirms all targets down. Sweeping the rest of the command platform._

_Medical team confirms Ocelot is in critical condition. Medivac'd to the medical platform. Commander Miller has minor injuries. Will treat on site._

_"Well, Boss, they fought their own way out. The Commander says Ocelot was stabbed in the fighting, but medical tells me they should be able to stablize him after they operate. The Commander himself's fine. He's directing the clean up. We'll do an after-action when you get back."_

"Told you," was all Ishmael had to say to that.

Ishmael'd recovered first, down in that laboratory. Venom and Quiet had been languishing in the afterglow when he'd stood, stooped to pocket hard drives, to scan documents. Curious, Venom had dragged himself over, idly skimming one that contained the XOF insignia - it had caught his eye.

"Don't worry, I'll make copies for you," Ishmael'd reassured him.

"...'Isaac'...?" An unlikely name in Afghanistan; something about an infiltration, needing an interrogator with first rate skills.

"My informant. Looks like he got made, though." Ishmael'd glanced at it. Clicked his tongue.

"'Isaac'," Venom repeated.

"Yes. Why?"

"The younger half-brother of Ishmael."

"Hah, really?" Affectionate and amused, again. "He loves that kind of shit." 

And Venom had been left to wonder what kind of man - what kind of American - read Moby Dick, but not The Bible. 

Ishmael was perusing his captured intel on his own device when Venom stirred awake with a noise of complaint. Their legs were tangled together; Ishmael's arm was wrapped around his shoulder while both of Venom's were around his chest, where his head nestled. Ishmael's balaclava was rolled up enough to let him smoke and Venom saw him frown, deeply.

"We hit Cipher where it hurts, didn't we?" Venom asked hopefully.

"Cipher's got cells all over the world." Ishmael blew smoke. "In every nation on earth, and most of 'em will be harder to attack than the ones in Afghanistan."

The weight of those sentences crushed Venom down to Ishmael's chest, who bore it. "You're fighting them too, aren't you? You and your organization."

"We are."

"I'm not alone?" Venom raised his head.

"No, Ahab. You're not alone." Ishmael kissed his brow. "I'll be with you until the day you die."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter's just the epilogue, and will also be up shortly.


	6. Epilogue

Venom's nap with Quiet lasted about an hour before he awakened to her lips on his. The final barrier between them had collapsed; had collapsed in Venom's mind a long time ago, waiting for her to stride, victorious, across it.

He held her hips as she crawled up to straddle his face.

Venom placed a kiss above her pubic bone; he glanced above her thigh and Pequod's open mouth below his visor, before the other man turned away hurriedly. Guiltily.

"We can do this later," Venom offered.

"Comrades don't cockblock comrades." Pequod shook his head. Flushed and breathing hard. "I mean, it's about _time_ \--"

"You want in?" Venom looked up at Quiet, who nodded. Of course she did; their pilot had pulled her ass out of the fire as many times as he had Venom.

"B-Boss? Are you serious?" 

_Loyalty like that isn't free._

"This is a one-time offer. Take it or leave it."

Pequod checked the fuel gauge, set the autopilot, slowed to a hover, and told the Mother Base ATC to extend his ETA for a slight weather delay - he was a professional, after all - before scrambling back to the seats.

Venom guided him down between them. "Who do you want? Me or her?"

" _Both of you._ "

And he and she stripped Pequod out of his flight suit, together.

 

 

A single Diamond Dog stood at the landing pad. A crisply snapped salute greeted him; Quiet vanished back to her cell. Pequod pulled away to refuel. Venom was glad to be home - there was only one thing on his mind: "Take me to Ka--"

"Boss!" Marmoset looked relieved, glad to see him, but there was a strange hardness in his eyes, too. "Commander Miller asked me to escort you."

 _Escort me where?_ Venom wondered. 

Off the command platform, as it turned out.

Kaz had shut him out - both literally and figuratively. All of the doors he tried were red, even the ones he could usually open. Barriers had been set up around the command platform. 'Authorized Personnel Only.' 

"It might be contaminated with toxic chemicals. We need to clean up. Do forensics. Intel is going to pore over every inch of this place to see what we missed," Kaz told him tersely, when he'd tried the radio. His voice was stronger than when he'd last heard it, but it rasped like hurt.

"But, Kaz, I want to see--"

"I don't have time for this, Snake," Kaz snapped, and closed the channel.

 

 

He went to the medical platform, instead. They told him they'd finished operating on Ocelot. That he was stable. That he needed rest; Ocelot was resistant to morphine, to most of the anesthetics they had. They would keep him under as long as they could. 

DD growled at the door when it hissed open.

Then sniffed the air. Whined. Pricked his ears back up and leaned forward to nuzzle Ocelot's face from where he'd curled up at his side. Then raised his head, hopefully.

"Sorry, boy." Venom scratched his ears. If DD thought he could do anything to fix this, he was mistaken. 

He'd seen plenty of men on the verge of death before. Even friends. The greyish cast of Ocelot's skin was familiar, as were the dark veins under it, and the hushed inhalation of the respirator over his mouth. Pins in one arm, his hands wrapped entirely in bandages. Gauze over knife wounds - eating and drinking would be agony for weeks. Months, maybe. 

This had happened near the end. This he could have stopped. 

 

 

The sublevels of the command platform remained barred to Venom, well after the the rest had been cleaned and cleared. This was his Base; he moved through it on his Commander's sufferance.

No cognitive dissonance here.

But Venom was the one who allowed it. He could stick C4 to those doors, blast them open. Order anyone in the way to stand aside. And Kaz - what could Kaz do? Crippled, exhausted?

Kill six armed men and women, apparently.

...If he did that, what would he find?

 

 

Kaz did show up to watch the bodies burn. Their enemies they'd simply given to the sea; only the Diamond Dogs were paid respects. He stood at Venom's side, stoic and undefeated; his coat was absent and he wore a black suit, black like the rings around his eyes, behind his aviators. Five Diamond Dogs had died in the attack; Titan was the sixth. 

As he held the folded flags Venom saw the stripes he'd painted down Ishmael's face with his fingers.

He'd reached for Kaz when it was over; Kaz was already walking away. Swiftly, though Venom was faster, and when his hand closed tenderly around Kaz's arm he shook him off with a snarl. Venom winced. Released him. Followed at his heels.

Kaz made it to the fifth stair before his head swayed and his eyes rolled back. Venom caught him easily. Gently. 

"I don't need your help," Kaz panted raggedly through gritted teeth. 

"I know." Venom cradled him anyway. Picked him up in his arms, and picked his way up to Kaz's quarters. 

They usually met in Venom's bare, sparsely decorated room. It contained no personal effects, only clothing and the tools of his trade. A dog dish for DD. Lubricant. Old condoms they no longer used; Kaz was clean. Kaz hadn't taken anyone else to his bed since Venom had awoken in Dhekelia. 

Kaz's room, by contrast, was littered with piles of documents. Books. Ledgers. Notes. Photographs. Printed tables with exchange rates and tax codes and the awkward scrawl of his left hand's writing in their margins. They filled every available surface. It looked like pure chaos to the unobservant; Venom knew from experience that Kaz knew exactly what and where everything in this room was.

Venom sat Kaz down on his bed messy bed - one of the few clear spaces - and sat beside him. Kaz stood immediately, and began to pace.

"So what happened? Where were you?" Kaz's voice was tight with poorly concealed anger. A familiar tone. "I know - the sandstorm, the radio signal. You didn't turn back for _twenty-four hours_ after you'd reestablished contact."

"Didn't Jaguar tell you?" Intelligence reported directly to Ocelot; that was presently impossible.

"I want to hear it from you."

So, Venom told him. Everything.

~~except that one thing only his other self and the demon will ever know that thing~~

Kaz listened in silence. Nodded, occasionally. Did not move or even incline his head when Venom told him what he and Quiet and Ishmael had done below the fortress. When Venom finished his tale, all he said was: "I see."

Kaz turned around, back to him. 

Swiped every stack of paper off his desk with his cane. Then he _howled_ with _rage_ ; knocked them off his dresser, his nightstand. Shoved these over, too. Smashed a clock and a bottle of sake to pieces. Threw a stapler at the wall so hard it broke open, screws and spring spinning across the floor. Went through his possessions, a _methodical_ whirlwind, destroying them all.

Venom had made himself as small as possible to ride out the storm. Was curled into a ball on the bed by the time Kaz was through. Certain that Kaz was going to turn on him next, smash him to pieces, too, and he wouldn't lift a finger to defend himself - he deserved it. 

"You get _one_ ," Kaz snarled, panting again, saliva at the corner of his mouth. "You came back to me, and you told me the truth. So you get _one_. But if you _ever_ abandon us again, _don't bother to come back_ because I will _kill you_."

Us?

Venom didn't flinch. No, he kissed him. Grabbed his hand so he couldn't pull away. Kaz fought back. Struggled. Kicked. Spat and swore and tried to bite him, punch him.

But this time, Venom didn't handle him like he was made of glass. And there was nothing a one-armed, one-legged man so weak with exhaustion that he couldn't walk up the stairs could _really_ do to him. So , Venom kissed him. Pinned him and kissed him _hard_. Bore the teeth and forced his tongue into Kaz's mouth anyway.

Kaz finally stilled. Kissed him back. His eyes were half-lidded and dazed; he looked satisfied. "Save that for later, Snake. I'll pass out on you, now."

Venom took his meaning. Of course he felt guilt; but who was he, to decide how Kaz should deal with his pain? If he _truly_ loved this man, shouldn't he be willing to do anything for him? Even things he didn't want to do? "Kaz."

"Just... stay with me while I sleep. Stay awake. All right? Don't leave."

"I won't."

Kaz kicked his shoes off and set his aviators in Venom's palm but remained otherwise dressed. Laid down with his head in Venom's lap. Venom stroked his hair back, and Kaz was asleep in seconds.

They stayed like that for eighteen hours. 

"Nngh, shit," Kaz blinked awake with a groan, at last. Rubbed his eyes; smacked his mouth. Reached for a cup of cold coffee that had long since dried on the walls and floor. Rolled over to stare blearily into Venom's face. "Morning."

"Morning." Venom smiled. Kissed his mouth.

"Mmph. Hey..." Kaz quirked an eyebrow. "Have you not... moved?"

Venom shook his head.

"You didn't have to take a piss?" Incredulous.

Venom shook his canteen.

"Oh _Snake_ ," Kaz laughed. "You could've left for a couple of _seconds_." He reached for Venom; traced the line of his jaw with his thumb affectionately. "Well, if you're taking orders. Go get me some breakfast. And coffee. It's going to be a long day, Bo--"

"'V'." Venom stroked his palm. "Isn't that what you used to call me? What's that stand for - Vic Boss?"

"I - yeah, I guess so." Kaz's hand shook. "Go get me some breakfast, V."

When Venom left him, Kaz looked like he was going vomit.

 

 

No, there were things Venom could never un-know. Like the fact that the inside of Kaz's mouth had been full of fresh wounds when he'd pushed his tongue into it. That his story - that they'd simply locked them up in a room without food and water and sleep-deprived them, and that he and Ocelot had wrested a gun away from a captor who'd stabbed Ocelot before Kaz could load and fire it - was a lie. The medical division was sticking to it, even though they had to know better, too.

They were support personnel, and they answered to Kaz. The intelligence division, who'd debriefed them and to whom Kaz would not lie if he wanted them to investigate the matter well, answered to Ocelot. They ruled the roost. The combat and command personnel who might answer to Venom didn't know any details.

No, there were things Venom could never un-know. Like who the first responder would have been, and the fact that he did not answer to Kaz.

Venom brought a bottle the choicest contraband - a bottle of whiskey - with him when he paid Osprey a personal call. The assault team's medic was young and normally ruggedly handsome in a way that Venom forced himself to ignore; right now he was haggard. He looked haunted. They found a private place behind a cluster of shipping containers, and Venom got him drunk.

"I've seen some shit in my day, Boss," Osprey slurred, belied by the gravity and disgust in the expression he wore. "I was a paramedic before I enlisted. I have seen some _shit_. Kids crushed by semis, wives whose husbands took a baseball bat with a nail in it to their faces.

"But there's a difference between violent trauma and slow, intentional damage, you know? Fuck I could _smell_ them from the next floor down. Blood, sweat, piss, festering wounds. Open intestines. The Commander was covered in dried vomit. And Ocelot, _Jesus_ , Ocelot... he was so dehydrated his gums were black. Hadn't swallowed in hours, probably. My guess, anyway, because I could still taste the semen in his mouth."

Venom lowered his gaze to the floor. "I don't know what the fuck the docs are telling you, but he had no defensive injuries. At least not that he received around the same time someone cut him open. He wasn't fighting shit. Miller did, though - whatever you want to make of that."

Venom couldn't resolve the image Kaz protecting Ocelot. That wasn't something that would ever happen, in his reality. Then again, neither was the reverse, and Ishmael'd swore to him it was true. That he would. "Did Kaz..." He couldn't bring himself to say it.

"Oh, yeah. So many times his pants were soaked right through."

Venom scrubbed a hand across his face. "...Thank you."

Osprey took another pull. "Any time, Boss. I'm not a fan of lies. But you should know... shit, look, Miller I understand. I guess. I don't have one, but some of the other guys have wives, and they'd do anything to protect them. If it was between what happened to him and giving you up... yeah, all right. You love him, right?"

Venom nodded yes. 

"But Ocelot. We all _know_ , Boss. We know. I know you know, too. How could you not? If you thought it was... I don't know, a crush, attraction - well, it isn't. Fuck me, _I'd_ give you up before I let somebody dig my guts out. And you're probably the man I admire most in the whole damn world, right? If it's not going to happen between you, _just tell him_. Break his heart. It's killing morale in the intel division right now. And something more than two people know is no longer a secret - it'll start killing morale over here, too."

_But what do I tell him? I don't know what I feel about him._

 

 

That question lay heavy on his mind when he went back to visit his old friend. They'd told him he was awake; he'd heard no voice, so he'd assumed Ocelot to be alone. Was startled, then, to find Quiet at his bedside. He was propped up with pillows into a half-sit. They had the Lee-Enfield between them, and Quiet signed a few words to him.

Ocelot signed back.

"When did you learn to do that?" Venom inquired; Ocelot hadn't mentioned that when Venom had first taken her back to Mother Base. Hadn't communicated with her that way during their interrogations. 

"Oh, ages ago." His tone was as relaxed and smooth as ever; only the beads of sweat on his forehead and his constricted pupils gave him away. "Took some time to teach it to her, though."

Venom felt very stupid for not thinking of that; for not learning it himself. "I'll have to get on that," he promised. "Hey, that's Ishmael's..."

"...Gift to Quiet," Ocelot filled him in. "Isn't it something?"

"It's a beat up bolt-action relic." 

Quiet frowned. Ocelot looked _scandalized_. "This is an 1897 Mk I with an _original_ , double-column, full-sized magazine. One of the first of its kind. This is a piece of _history_." They both regarded him like he was some kind of philistine, and his dirty paws didn't belong on their art piece.

"Sorry, sorry." Venom raised his hand. "My mistake. ...Not sure you want it in your loadout, though, Quiet."

"Why not? Bet she could do a mad minute in thirty seconds."

Quiet raised her fingers. Ten. She could do it in ten.

"It's a date," Ocelot promised.

Venom steeled himself. "Hey, Quiet. Do you mind? Ocelot and I need to talk."

She cocked her head curiously, but left them without question, taking the rifle with her.

"What's on your mind, Boss?" Calm. Welcoming. Easy.

Venom sat heavily on the bed beside him. He had no idea what to say. _You shouldn't have done that for me. We're friends, not lovers._ But when had sex ever overruled intimacy? _I've known you longer than any man, but I feel like I hardly know you._ He could lie: _I'm not attracted to you._ He could tell the truth: _I am attracted to you, but I'm afraid._ Of Kaz. Of Ocelot. Instead he said, lamely: "I made a head shot at 1600 yards."

"Oh yeah?" Ocelot perked up. "What was the wind speed?"

"I don't know. I'd have to ask my spotter." Venom felt stupid. So stupid. Lost. This was a terrible idea. Best to leave things the way they were, like a coward.

_Loyalty like that isn't free._

No, it comes at a price. And unrewarded would fester into resentment. Eventually, into something even worse than hate. 

He couldn't imagine Ocelot ever hating anybody.

Ocelot sighed amicably. Affectionately. "Boss. Here. Take my hand." He reached out with bandaged fingers, which Venom caught. "Look into my eyes." Venom turned to obey, staring into his

Pale, pitiless eyes

He tried to run, but it was too late.

 

The salt-laden night air on Mother Base was refreshing; Venom smiled as he breathed it in. He'd had a long, heartfelt conversation with Ocelot, who'd confessed that while he did indeed have deep feelings for him, they were nothing more than brotherly. Ocelot would be fine as soon as he healed. Kaz, too. They'd been starved and dehydrated and wounded in their escape, so they were shaken, but otherwise unharmed. He was proud to know men that resourceful and determined; prouder still that they loved him.

He was glad to know, too, that another MSF man - Ishmael - had survived the helicopter crash. Was working with his own forces, against Cipher. They'd been close before the fall of Mother Base; Venom'd promised him that the next time they met, he would remember his name. 

Still heady from the adrenaline rush of their assault on the fortress he and Quiet had made love, finally, in the helicopter on the way home. That had been coming for a while. He'd confessed it to Kaz, who'd been angry and thrown things, but he'd eventually forgiven him. All would eventually be well. Quiet was loyal, Kaz was steadfast.

And Ocelot was his oldest, most reliable friend.

 

 

"I think I patched up most of the holes and I'll keep bailing on this end, but pretty soon that ship is going to break apart. Especially if you keep driving it into the rocks."

"It wasn't meant to last forever. We'll tell him soon enough."

"Sooner than I'd planned, _now_."

"You should be worried, not resentful. He's not going to be thrilled when all of this comes back to him."

"Oh, I'm not afraid of _Venom_ \- he's a puppy dog."

"Puppies grow up eventually."

"Sure. Whatever you say. Can we cool it with the animal metaphors? I blew my load on those for Miller."

"You? Tired of metaphors?"

"I'm tired in general."

"I need to make sure you're aware that his memories aren't all gone. Some of them have definitely come back to him."

"I know."

"You know?"

"I left some on purpose. There were some that, when I took them away, turned him into a lifeless sack of skin nobody would ever mistake for you. With them, he was driven, determined. Unflinching. He'd never have your charisma no matter what I did, so I let him have his own strength."

"You didn't think that would cause problems down the line?"

"They were close enough to what you experienced for me to make them fit, with a few adjustments. He was less like you when I removed them; more like you when I left them in."

"I'm sure you could have--"

"I was the only man on the ground. I made a judgment call. And now I'm being second-guessed by my rear echelon. You of all people should know how useful and helpful that is."

"I'm nobody's rear echelon."

"Well, maybe you should be. You're almost 50 - getting a little long in the tooth to be a grunt."

"Hm. Pretty sure my CQC'd still beat yours, kid."

"That's not saying much, at present."

"...Look, I--"

"And making this a personal call was stupid. You could have relayed this information to me by proxy. This was an unnecessary risk. Miller'll be watching me. Don't do it again."

"...Thank you, Adam."

"Any time, John."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks. Had to have that post-credits scene of the shitty cat reporting to his Boss, it's MGS tradition.
> 
> Couple of notes: I was going to name the other two helo pilots Rachel and Jeroboam, but those ships get the hell out of dodge in Moby Dick, so it didn't really fit. The Astrea and the Titan meet the same spectacular end the Pequod does in their respective canons, though. 
> 
> I like to think that Pequod makes it all the way to 1995 in Outer Heaven.
> 
> (PS: If you've ever read Ad Infernum you know exactly how thrilled I think Venom would be about Ocelot's string-pulling.)

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: The comments now contain a cameo my infamous resident fandom troll, T.F.F. I've chosen to leave them up to warn others about them, rather than delete them, but they contain rape threats, homophobia, misogyny, racism, Islamophobia (as well as a dire lack of reading comprehension and general ignorance of canon and the real world topics discussed, fractal levels of wrongness re: medicine and military issues). If these bother you, steer clear of TFF's comments.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [By the Throat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9085309) by [feusgan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feusgan/pseuds/feusgan)




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